1. What does short film mean for you?
I would say the answer is implicit in the question itself – a short film is any film that is shorter than a feature one. For me, this means films up to 35 minutes. For some festivals, it is films up to 15 or 20 minutes. We all have our own idea of what a short film is, but it is actually any film shorter than a feature, because the mid-length film is just a fabrication served to us by the CIA.
2. Why does short film matter? What are its greatest strengths and virtues?
Short film matters because it is to filmmakers what futsal is to football players. Ronaldinho wouldn’t be Ronaldinho if he had never played futsal in the street and learned to take punches and dribble the ball in a confined space. He later transferred to a football field where there is more room and the rhythm is different, while still maintaining the finesse he acquired from playing futsal, which allowed him to conquer the world. Short film is like futsal. It is how everyone starts, but very few come back to it.
Its greatest advantage is that it lasts for a short time. There is less pressure related to it because you know it has a limited time frame. Most films are boring and not very good, so you’re often happy that the experience was short and you didn’t have to sit there for two hours cursing the moment you left your house. I’m fascinated when I come across a good short, because it takes so much skill to make something work within such a short window of time. Then I start wishing it was longer. And if you are the one making a short – you have the freedom to make mistakes, because it won’t be seen by too many people anyway. All of this is what makes short film great, actually.
3. What is your favourite short film and why? Could you also choose one of the films in the croatian.film database that you would recommend our users to watch?
This is a difficult question because I’m not very good at enumerating art. I could take the nepotist approach and mention the films directed by my friends Marko Jukić and Rino Barbir, but that wouldn’t be fair because I had a part in making them. Lately I really liked Karlo Vorih’s Fall of Our Summer. It reminded me that filmmaking should be fun and I haven’t watched anything that made me so happy in a long time. Besides Karlo’s film, here are the first three films that come to my mind: Then I see Tanja, On Shaky Ground and Summer Fruits. I had a very good feeling while watching them, and after I finish answering these questions, I’ll go on and watch them again. Zvonimir Jurić’s Yellow Moon is also brilliant!
4. With Funeral, you scooped up the Golden Hook Award for Best Script and the Audience Award at the Split Mediterranean Film Festival, as well as the award for Best Croatian Film at the Tabor Film Festival. Congratulations!
Were you expecting such a result? What was the response from the audience? You earned two jury awards and one award from the audience – which one is more important to you and why?
Thank you. I wasn’t expecting to win these awards, though I did hope the film would be successful. I have never spent such a long time working on a film and I can’t even look at it anymore. I can’t tell if it’s any good or whether it’s boring. I hadn’t hoped I would have much success with the audience because, in a way, this film is a step in a different direction from my previous work. There is still humour in Funeral, but in a very reduced, subdued form, so I was afraid this would not resonate with the audience and I was not at ease before the screening in Split, because these were my friends and relatives. The feedback on the film was good, but I am especially happy that my dad liked it, because the film is actually about me, him and his late father, my grandpa. I don’t know which award is my favourite. I am both a populist and a screenwriter, so both of these are important to me. I also won the best film award at Tabor, so that one also matters to me because I’m also a director. The jury has a numerical advantage of 2 to 1, even though it actually doesn’t, because there were a total of six of them, and the audience numbered about 700. I’m glad about all of it, because it was really such an arduous process making this film.
5. “A film imbued with powerful, yet subtle emotions, that skilfully and succinctly portrays deeply-rooted family relations, characteristic of this hard Balkan-Mediterranean milieu” said the jury statement of the Best Screenplay award for Funeral. Do you see this Balkan-Mediterranean environment more as an inspiration for building your cinematic world or as an inevitable condition of Croatian film?
That is a great question and one you’ve already answered in part. To me, it is an inescapable condition, because I have lived here all my life and I am fascinated by the people around me and their behaviour. In truth, you often analyse the people around you and make fun of them, or praise them, God forbid. So, I couldn’t do anything else even if I wanted to because it would be impossible and unnatural; the world around me influences my interests and the films I make. I hope that in the future I will succeed in being even more honest and brave in portraying this world, because I believe it is the only way to make something worthwhile.
6. During your career you have acted in your colleagues’ films, as well as in your own. Would you say that the experience has helped you in the scriptwriting and directing? Is it more challenging to work in front or behind the camera and why?
I never thought about it, but it probably does make it easier because acting is a very different film-related experience. Perhaps it has helped me in writing dialogues, though I’m not a 100 per cent sure. I think it doesn’t hurt for a director to experience the misery and uncertainty one feels in front of the camera, in order to gain a touch of empathy for these strange beings, the actors.
It was equally challenging to stand in front of and behind the camera, and the only way for me to cope with it was through endless preparation. It was a personal story and I really wanted to act in it because I was portraying myself, but in a way, I was also saying goodbye to my grandad. All in all, it was stressful, but also a lot of fun because whether you like it or not, you go a little crazy when you get in front of the camera. It must be all that attention, I guess.
On the other hand, I never would have done it if the cinematographer on the project hadn’t been Rino Barbir, who is a director himself, but more importantly, a friend and someone I hang out with, so I had absolute trust in him. That was a very important aspect of that decision, because if it had been anyone else, regardless of their cinematographic talent, I wouldn’t have done it, because I wouldn’t have any control, or at least the illusion of having any control. By which I mean control over the poetics and the atmosphere of the film, which is very important.
7. Funeral is a darkly humorous film about dying that actually tells an intimate family story. What were your main challenges while working on the film, and was this experience different from your previous films?
The biggest challenge was portraying my relationship with my father Boris as faithfully as possible. However, a year into the project I still had no idea who would play this fictitious Boris and I was starting to lose faith – until I met actor Stojan Matavulj, who is an amazing guy even though he keeps forwarding me funny videos and pictures on WhatsApp.
This was the first professional film I directed, so I thought it would be a less stressful experience, but I was wrong. I have learned that it is not really that much money and that it’s still an uphill battle and probably always will be. My goal in the future is to transfer as much of the joy of amateur filmmaking to professional circumstances.
Also, apart from some actual money, the difference was we also had real film producers, so it saved me from having to deal with the things I usually hate, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank producer Rea Rajčić and the entire team on the fact that it didn’t rain while we were shooting.
8. What are your next steps? Do you have any new projects in the works? Can you tell us a bit more about them?
My next step is pursuing several different things hoping that one, or several of them, will work out. Most of the projects I am currently working on I am doing as a co-writer. I have written a few scripts together with some people, I’m still writing a few others with some other people, and I’m working on a few on my own. There is a documentary I am working on with Rino Barbir that I am looking forward to, and it is something I can mention because it actually might come true. We are currently in project development and we are developing the project like crazy until it is developed because that is the point of project development. There are some other things I find interesting, but there is no point in talking about them if they might not come to fruition. I hope that some day I will make another fiction film and that it will be a short one.