Ten years after the film On the milky way, Emir Kusturica filming begins in the Vojvodina village of Čurug Churužanke – a film about a family whose members gather to bury a grandmother who suddenly comes back to life.
Kusturica's new film is being made at a time when the State Film Center of Serbia has had no money for film production for at least the last two years.
Filming will begin on June 10 in the Vojvodina village of Čurug and will last 12 weeks.
Announcing the new film to journalists, Kusturica said that at the center of the story is a Serbian family that has been falling apart for centuries, but never enough to really disappear. Its members gather in the old house to see off Ana, mother, grandmother and retired teacher, played by Vesna Trivalić, to her eternal rest.
A priest was called, a drink was bought, black clothes were sewn, and then Anna suddenly came back to life.
"Churužanka" is inspired by the novel Last moments by the Russian writer Valentin Rasputin, while the script is signed by Emir Kusturica and David Jakovljević, the author of the films Cutting i Lilacs.
Apart from Vesna Trivalić, the film also stars Tamara Dragičević, Jovana Gavrilović, Vahid Džanković, Andrija Milošević, Tamara Krcunović, Milan Marić, Miki Manojlović, Andrija Kuzmanović, Seka Sablić and others.
Why Čurug?
Čurug, a Vojvodina village on the banks of the Tisza river, was chosen "because no one knows about Čurug", explained Kusturica.
The house that will star in "Churužanka"
When he first arrived in this place, he noticed an unusual combination of water and air, the plain and the river, which gives the space an almost fairy-tale dimension, and such an environment corresponds to the story from his film, he told, which takes place in a 200-year-old house, and which brings together family memories, historical heritage and the fractures of the modern world.
Family energy
The basic idea of the film, he said, is that we live in a time of "huge moral unraveling and the breakdown of world societies", so according to him, the existential questions from Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's plays did not remain in the last century, but extended life in the modern age.
When asked by "Vremena" whether the family she wants to portray can fundamentally change over time or if something remains unchanged in each of its members, Kusturica answers that the family is maintained by energy that functions as a "buckle or anchor".
"My experience says that that family, no matter how much some types in it decay, cannot fall apart enough to say that it has disappeared. It has been falling apart for 200 years, and the best novels in the world have been written precisely about the fall of the family. However, what is at stake here is a kind of energy that, like a buckle or an anchor, holds each of them on the level of cultural and religious correlation," says Kusturica.
He also adds that customs, such as family glory, represent the strongest anchor of the community and part of the unwritten collective rules by which people live in these areas.
"I believe that the motif of the Serbian family should be sought first of all in the Slavic tribal collective code that has sustained these people throughout history. That family shows the ability to be a soldier, to fight for freedom and to be among the worlds. Although modern motives of political correctness do not easily grasp it, it basically remains archetypal and cannot be fundamentally disintegrated," says Kusturica.
Vesna Trivalić: "Emotions from the script are signposts to me"
Vesna Trivalić says that working on this film brings her peace and great trepidation at the same time.
"From the first page to the last, reading the script, I went through all the emotions that I know I had and that, after all, every person has. With the fact that here they became more complex, unpredictably more complex, and then they became signposts to me. So I think a lot about my family and I don't stop thinking about my mother," says Trivalić.
A film "out of context"
Emir Kusturica is shooting a new film at a time when the financing of domestic productions is in a major crisis. When asked by "Vremen" whether it was difficult to secure money in such circumstances, Kusturica replied that his project did not depend on domestic institutions.
"My position is universalist and has always been connected to those who are not from here financially. We found money, collected it and were not tied to domestic institutions. Even before this decision that there was no money, or that there was money for some and not for others, I never even counted on them. So you can see me as a person out of context," Kusturica points out.
Thanks to his international success and reputation, Emir Kusturica can find financial resources even without state aid, which is not an option for many domestic directors.
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