An intimate story about a man, a family, the relationship between a father and a son, the need for closeness and love, but also a call to (self)knowledge and overcoming one's own limitations, simultaneously quiet and stormy, painful and beautiful, utterly naked, is brought to you by the film "Yugo Florida", the debut feature film by the director. Vladimir Tagić.
"Yugo Florida" has won over audiences at numerous festivals, and viewers across our country have the opportunity to find themselves in it. Tagić's film's theatrical run in Montenegro began on January 17th and 18th in Tivat, and in the coming days it will be shown in other cities, the Montenegrin Cinema Network announced.
Tagić dedicated the film to his father, emphasizing that it is not an autobiography, but an expression of love and tenderness, he said in an interview with "Vijesti".
"The loss of your first parent, whether it's your father or mother, actually marks the end of the first half of your life and the end of your childhood, no matter how old you are at that moment. This is where you face the death of someone closest to you, as well as the realization that this is actually the end of your childhood, and that your life is passing and a new chapter is beginning," says Tagić, explaining that the main character of his work, played by a popular actor, is also going through this. Andrija Kuzmanovic.
"Yugo Florida" is a Montenegrin co-production, and it is a film whose silences speak so loudly that they set off roller coasters of suppressed fears, suffering and emotions, the Cinema Exhibitors' Network emphasizes in a statement.
"It is a quiet but powerful cinematic experience that does not impose itself, but remains long after the lights in the cinema hall are turned off. The network of cinema exhibitors invites the audience to allow themselves silence, the kind that hurts, but also heals," they say.
The description states that the story centers around the lonely Zoran (Kuzmanovic), a man whose job is almost absurd - he directs a reality show and watches the participants while they sleep.
"His monotonous everyday life is disrupted by sudden life circumstances that reconnect him with his estranged father (Nikola Pejakovic Kolja) and lead to an emotional, perhaps final, journey together. This journey is not just spatial, but deeply internal - confronting silences that have lasted too long and words that have never been spoken," the description emphasizes.
Screenings are on January 20 and 21 in cultural centers in Berane, Mojkovac and Bijelo Polje, on January 22 in Danilovgrad, Plužine, Žabljak and Kotor, on the 23rd it will be shown in the Nikšić Theater, and in Kotor it will remain on January 23, 24 and 26 in the evenings, with an additional screening on January 27. The film will be shown in Zeta on January 28, and the audience in Nikšić can also see it in the “Cinema 213” cinema from January 22 to 28. Podgorica's “Cineplexx” has included the film in its regular repertoire from January 22, and the film will be shown in the newly opened cinema in Porto Montenegro - Cinegrand Epic. Screenings in Herceg Novi have been announced for February 2 and 3.
The film won a number of awards, including at the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Herceg Novi Film Festival, and Vladimir Tagić took home the award for best debut director at the 10th edition of the Podgorica Džada Film Fest.
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"The audience and critics have recognized the emotional strength and authenticity of Tagić's debut film, which in a subtle and unobtrusive way combines generational differences, silences and unspoken emotions. It is a warm story, imbued with dry humor, about a generation that grew up in the nineties and today faces a world in which closeness, patience and understanding have become rare values," the network states.
Director Vladimir Tagić talks more about his film for "Vijesti", but also about various other circumstances and events in society...
The film “Yugo Florida” was well received at festivals and captivated audiences, and is now available to the general public in Montenegro. As the author, what would you say viewers can expect and why they should watch this film?
Although I made the film as a personal, intimate story of mine, this is actually something that is collectively close to many and that many can understand. I hope that in that sense the audience will find something that will be exciting and interesting for them too. It is a sincere, intimate film about the need for closeness, the need for love, and above all about family and family relationships, and here specifically about the relationship between a father and a son.
You dedicated the film to your father and your relationship with him, emphasizing that it is different from the one you are portraying. Speaking about this topic, the relationship between father and son, I would say that it is often treated in art, as complex, layered and inspiring, why?
I think that it is actually the topic of the relationship with the parent, father or mother, it depends on individual cases. In this particular case, it is the relationship between father and son, so I will dwell on that... The relationship with the father is something that forms a boy, forms a man, and depending on that, he begins to build his image of life, what he should be and what he should be in this world, what kind of man or man. He defines your upbringing, existence, a large part of your life and in relation to whether you love him, in which phase you love him more, in which phase less, when you try to become the same as him, and when you try to oppose that authority and rebel against it, these are all factors that formed you. This is why the dynamic of the father-son relationship is something that specifically defined the life of my main character in this film at the moment the film begins, and in many ways directed his life path. When he loses that father figure, who is imperfect and problematic in many ways, and their relationship is not what it should be, his life simply loses ground. So he begins to question everything he has done up to that point, including whether he has led his life in the right way or whether he still needs to change something in his life. And that is a crisis, or rather an existential panic, that seizes him at the moment when he is faced with the death of his father figure, who, however imperfect, was still something he directed his life towards. I think that is important in itself and that is why artists probably return to this motif in various ways, because this motif of losing the first parent, be it a father or a mother, actually marks the end of the first half of your life, it actually marks the end of your childhood, no matter how old you are at that moment. I think that you are actually facing the death of someone who is closest to you, as well as the realization that this is actually the end of your childhood, that your life is passing by and that a new chapter is beginning. My main character is unsure and doesn't know what he learned from that experience, whether he became a better person, whether he understood anything about life better, he just knows that after that moment things will never be the same.
Given that you faced that loss yourself, what was it like working on this film?
Working on this film really meant a lot to me and helped me in the sense that I wanted to go through that experience and to somehow process it therapeutically and go through a kind of catharsis, actually talking about that event, but also about that life experience of mine. The process wasn't so much painful as it was beautiful. And it was nice to remember my father, it was nice to think about him, and it was nice to write about some of the things we went through together.
I would just like to emphasize that, of course, I did not make an autobiographical film in the sense that I am the father I wrote and/or the son I wrote. That is not my father and I. My father and I had a rather different relationship, a relationship that was in many ways much more tender and with less acute conflict, so this was by no means my attempt to settle some score with my father, far from it. I wrote my first film and dedicated it to him in the most beautiful and tender possible sense of the word. And so, I was glad to remember him and I was glad to make this as a kind of memory and remembrance of him.
Speaking of the main character, what's interesting is that he lives in that paradox of today's, contemporary world. On one side, a reality show, on the other, loneliness. How and to what extent does this portray a generation that is facing both emotional exhaustion and the absence of closeness or running away from it, and to what extent the need for closeness and love?
That's exactly what defines my main character. In the paradox between the fact that on the one hand you can't make any decisions, you can't accept some kind of responsibility in your life, you run away from responsibility, you run away from closeness, and on the other hand, that closeness is exactly what you lack and need. That paradox is something that defined my generation and what I tried to deal with here. Of course, without wanting to judge anyone, I think that in many ways we are not mature enough, not stable enough, not mentally strong and tough enough and then we run away from emotions, we run away from feelings, we find it difficult to cope with a world that is already cruel in itself. So we end up, let's say, living a little and life passes us by. That's the state my hero is in at the beginning of the film, and what happens to him is actually a call to wake up, a call to shake off that lethargic state. And as painful as that call is, it has to happen to him in order for him to take on some kind of responsibility, to move forward and find love within himself, to find the strength to be by his father's side in his last moments and to go through it with him... I think that all of that is a great quality of the main character of this film, who did find both strength and love within himself, no matter how painful and difficult it was, but he does it for his father. In my opinion, he shows here how strong a man he really is, regardless of how much all other circumstances suggest that he is not.
If we move away from Zoran as the protagonist and talk about awakening, how do you think we can awaken as a society, whether in the region or on a global level? Ungrateful and immodest, but I would say that we desperately need this awakening.
I understand perfectly well what you are asking me. I cannot say that I am smart enough to give a correct answer to that question, nor can I claim to have the answer. I absolutely agree that we need this collective awakening. On the one hand, I am happy about what has happened in Serbia in the last year, and here I am thinking of the rebellion led by students and the energy and strength that they have to get some things going in our society. I think that they have managed to collectively awaken all of us, which I think is important. Whether that will yield any concrete results at this particular moment, we do not know now. Maybe it will not at this moment, but it will be a spark that will help some things change very quickly, I am sure, and I think that we all need it. It is a kind of optimism, it is a kind of strength that young people, students, who, although they are not my generation but are younger than me, have set an example of how it is possible to do this collectively. It is up to each of us individually, of course, to take one small step, as much as each of us can, so that all of it together will be a joint effort to make our society and our country a better and nobler place to live.
Can film and art be our motive, our driving force, our sobering up, and even our strength for that first, initial step that is necessary or even the main one?
I'm sure they can help, at least on the level of helping an individual find that strength within themselves, at least for a moment, at least a small spark. I don't think that films have that much power to change the world, I'm not sure about that and that would be a bit too much to put on the shoulders of a film. Certainly, I think they help the individual. Art helps the individual, it can speak to them, it can comfort them, it can hug them, it can tell them that they are not alone in a problem they are in, that other people feel the same way they do. An individual can recognize their own suffering in a work of art and say "Okay, okay, this is not something that is insurmountable, this is not something that I cannot overcome, this is something that we all collectively share"...
I am sure and believe that art is something that a person really needs and is essential for his healthy life, for mental health, for spiritual health. I am sure that art is essential. Of course, you can live without it, the most important thing is to have money for basic needs, but art is something that will help your life gain a fullness, a spiritual side.
On the other hand, art and culture are often neglected in most systems, just departments in some government... In a recent interview, you also said that you have new projects that you are working on, but you don't know what will happen to them due to the situation the country is in, that is, the circumstances in which there are no competitions and in which the government is cracking down on artists who show discontent and disobedience. How do you stay strong and create in such an environment, overcome it and not pander, not only to the audience, but also to decision-makers?
I think we just need to be aware that none of these things are forever and that all of this will pass and a time will come when things will change. We live in such a country, in such a region, in such a space where these turbulences, changes, conflicts and confrontations are constant. This is not something that just started now. We are used to having it, then not having it, then again having it, then again not having it... It seems to be blacker and worse than ever, then it improves a little and then it seems that everything is fine, then everything goes down again... You know, we are used to living in such a time and in such a country. After all, if some of us are too young to have experienced it all ourselves, then they just need to look at what the history of our country has been like in the last 50, 60, 70 years, and it will be clear to us that there has never been complete peace and prosperity here and that there have been constant ups and downs. So, patience is something that is important, faith that change will come and patiently working to make that change happen. That is something that is important. You should not give up and succumb to pressures coming from outside. Of course, in all of this you need to find some way to survive, because that is not easy in these times either. I have to honestly say that people are really managing as best they can, many are losing their jobs, everyone needs to be understood. I do not judge people who work and who agree to work in some circumstances that may not be to my, let's call it taste, because I understand people, because it is difficult, it is not easy, it is not easy to survive in times like these, you need to feed your family or children if you have them, you need to pay for an apartment and provide the most basic conditions for your life. We are all constantly faced with this challenge, so I also understand some actors, authors, artists, colleagues who nevertheless agree to do some projects that I know they wouldn't do otherwise, and I would never judge them for that, because I think that everyone has their own pain that they carry and they should not be discredited because of that and in that way. Of course, I'm talking about people who do their job honestly and honorably, I'm not talking directly about people who sold themselves to the authorities and became theirs, became part of their propaganda, machinery and do whatever is asked of them for them just to collect more and more money - I'm not talking about them.
And so we bring the conversation to an end... Would you like to add anything?
I don't know what to add, except that I hope that the audience in Montenegro will watch this film, that they will like it, and that they will find something in it for themselves.
Capture the nuances of life
Intimate stories often give rise to great and universal achievements, which is what this film is, given that it carries a strong emotion that can be felt and awakened in everyone, regardless of differences or similarities.
That's right, that's the idea, yes.
Although the film opens up various topics and is full of emotions, there is no pathos, and feelings and silence bring out the essence, create an experience and read messages... All of this is what characterizes your poetics - life, its truths and complexity... What was particularly important to you this time, both from a personal and professional perspective?
It's important that you somehow find a way to capture something that is poetically true about the moment you've experienced, and to be honest and true to yourself in that poetic truth. That's why those silences and moments of loneliness and emotional moments, and yet on the other hand the moments full of humor, were important, because they all somehow unite something that we can experience. When we watch a film on screen, it's, at least to a large extent, an attempt to capture life in its complexity, ambivalence, multi-layeredness... That was the idea - to bring all these elements closer to something that we can experience as the life that each of us lives, as well as the struggles, problems and hopes and needs that so many of us face. In order to achieve this on film, it is important that, on the one hand, of course, you do not pander to the audience and do not make things easy, but to be honest and truthful, and on the other hand, again, not to make any thesis, but to try to show that in life things are never just black or white, but that all these shades of life exist in parallel.
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