Ivan Ikić's debut feature film, film Barbarians, has its Belgrade premiere on Thursday, September 4, in three cinemas. In the CV of Ivan Ikić, it is written that he was born in 1982 in Belgrade, that he completed film directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade as a student of the generation, that he directed a documentary film Tarot Serbia, and that it is Barbarians directed according to his script. The film is the story of a group of teenagers from working-class families on the outskirts, whose only choices are folk clubs, football stands and excesses. Except for Jasna Đuričić, Marina Vodeničar and Mirko Vlahović, all the other actors are naturists. At the film festival in Karlovy Vary Barbarians received a special jury award, at the Palić festival the "Sejfi Teoman" award for the most provocative and bravest first or second film, in Herceg-Novi Jasna Đuričić received the "Golden Mimosa" for the best female role, in Vrnjačka banja Ikić's script received the third prize, and at the recently concluded festival in Zadar "Awantura", Željko Marković received the award for the best actor.
"WEATHER": Obviously, the fact that Željko Marković is a naturist did not bother the Zadar festival, unlike the Niš Festival of Acting Achievements where you were told that actors could not apply for an award because they did not have a degree in acting.
IVAN IKIC: That was a big disappointment. Everyone came to Niš, except for the main actor Željko Marković, who traveled by train from Mladenovac to Niš for nine hours and arrived ten minutes after the end of the film. It's our fault for being disqualified. This means that the acting guild did not want to give a chance to those boys and girls, some of whom might go on to study acting. They seem to have forgotten that the Niš Lifetime Achievement Award is named after Pavlo Vujisić, who did not graduate from university. However, this attitude of the Nis festival towards the actors from my film is adequate to the attitude of society towards the characters they play.
And in which you introduce the viewer in the first frame of the film with lyrics from the song Expecting the barbarians Constantine Cavafy: "Why is it already dark?, and the barbarians did not come/ And some people arrived from the border/ And they said that the barbarians are no more./ So now, What will we do without barbarians??/ They were a solution after all. "
The metaphor can talk about the relationship of the Balkans to the rest of Europe, the province to the city, the poor to the rich, and I wanted to find modern barbarians that society perceives as a danger. Every society has a monopoly on danger. Why should you team up if you don't have a common enemy? An enemy is always a good excuse for ruling structures to stay in power, Orwellian 1984. talk about it, even these years, rest on fear. The media constantly serves it up... Looking for guys and girls who would transpose into what I imagined in the film, I came across a group who, like the characters in the film, were social outcasts, teenagers who are ashamed of society, and perceive them as barbarians .
I read in an interview that your mother told you about a group of fans that everyone in the neighborhood is afraid of, so you met them...
Yes, I mentioned my mom and now everyone is making fun of me for that, but that's really what happened. I invited those fans to the casting, they came, I don't know what they were expecting - new afternoon entertainment or to make some quick money - and it turned out that they were the ones I needed. We started, and they found it interesting, and the exchange between me and them was good. I started getting emails, different people wrote to me: "How can you deal with them, they're scum!" And unlike them, I recognized in that group of fans who were feared by the neighborhood, a vital energy and passion, a rebellion that doesn't know how to direct.
If we agreed that these children are not a danger to society, what is it?
I always see danger in those who wear expensive suits. I read somewhere that someone in America said that it was not illegal immigrants who caused the world crisis, but these people in suits. I agree.
The film is full of details from our recent history: Kosovo secession, rally organized on that occasion, burning of the American embassy, breaking shop windows and stealing goods, the behavior of football fans, shooting a black football player during a game, porn videos clips with minors, Big Brother ...
I am referring to the historical context, so it is better to be realistic and not artificial. Those recognizable parts from reality were taken over because they testify to the spirit of the times...
... For example, the scene when the president of the football club thanks the fans for not causing any incident during the game, as if they were some kind of force...
But they are, every club needs fans, it's a symbiosis, so club presidents usually thank the fans for good governance.
"He thinks he is a criminal if he joined the board of directors" says one of your characters.
Look at the football clubs of the second division, the third division, look at that milieu, everything will be clear to you. Football has always been a place where alpha males prove themselves, but not on the field, but in management, from a position of power. Football is a reflection of male power in society. Why does Berlusconi run a football club, why do politicians, generals, rich people want to be on the boards of Zvezda and Partizan? Because those are the only places where they prove their manly worth. Football, I know, is quite present in the film, maybe because I wrote the script for it Barbarians I started writing during the last World Cup, and the premiere was during this year's.
The secession of Kosovo is also present.
I tried to avoid the political context in the film, but the moment of secession of Kosovo is important for the plot because it was the event that caused the rebellion to materialize. But that rebellion had no consequences either in politics or in the fight for a better tomorrow. Neither was Kosovo returned, nor did Serbia take any serious stance towards it. We still continued to play the role of victim and fulfill the colonial demands. And the politicians who organized that protest, with the help of those same Americans, have now come to power. I like to say that that event put civilization and barbarians in their place: civilization remained civilization, and barbarians - barbarians. The tragic circle has not changed. That event was spent, the energy burned, and now it only serves to show how futile any rebellion is because nothing will change.
U To the barbarians, during school time, over the loudspeaker, children were invited to a rally for the secession of Kosovo...
How do you think it is normally done? For the masses to spontaneously gather for a protest? No way! All the events of the people were always organized, and because of someone's interest. You can see for yourself that the workers here do not protest while watching their companies die. Why? Because the previous rebellions made such action pointless, and because they lost faith that they could change something. And that is part of the ideology of the relationship between civilization and barbarism. Even when the barbarians rebel, their rebellion remains in vain.
Are they Barbarians your rebellion?
It's true that I've been obsessed with that topic for years, because I'm the generation of the Fifth of October that had its own rebellion, and it turned out that what she was fighting for was not what she thought it was. We thought we were fighting for a better society, and we ended up in the most arrogant of all systems. There is no justification for why we are the way we are: this is not a system in a time of crisis, there is no danger of war, there are no sanctions, there is no enemy. We are now living in a retrograde period where basic human rights are threatened. We have exchanged the basic human right, the right to work, for the right to choose on the market whether we are going to buy this or that detergent. And that, in the conceptual sense, is going back a hundred years.
If children are our future, and if even one only child feels abandoned, is the message of your film that the country does not think about its future?
We don't know if we will exist tomorrow, we don't know what we are striving for, we don't know what the street we live in will look like, we haven't planned what the city we live in should look like, we simply don't think about the future. We are ideologically completely lost. We accepted the liberal doctrine that we don't need any ideology, we accepted that the only ideology is the market, that you should work where someone tells you to work and spend where someone tells you. We have no space to think about how we want the society in which we want to live to look like.
What is Luka's future?, the future of the main character in the film?
The moment the rebellion in you is suppressed, and when you accept the game of your environment and agree to become the same as them, what you did not want to be, then your future is certain: you will never regain the desire to ask questions, but you will always be guided the position of the majority. So does Luka. He returns to the only place where he can find his place, where he started.
Among the outsiders... He was also rejected by all the people close to him: The father left the family., the mother acts as if Luka does not exist, The girl he loves doesn't want him....
It is dramaturgy behind closed doors. The film was not made according to the dramaturgical principles that viewers are used to and that is why it is unusual for them. There is a genuine emotion in Luke that should be embraced, not eliminated. Would his father accept him if he approached him? Well - it wouldn't. That's why Luka doesn't approach him. The father has a new family, and Luka realizes that there is no way they can communicate. That scene could have ended happily, but what would that have achieved? Viewers would be satisfied: the guy was saved and - what? They would walk out of the cinema, they would not think about Luka anymore because he was saved, and they would forget about the movie. Then why was it filmed at all? To be forgotten?
Although you think that society has given up on those children, social worker in your film, therefore a representative of that society, he tries very hard to lead Luka on the right path.
I have personal experience with centers for social work, and I know that young people work there for whom it is their first job, and I know that they quickly leave it because they realize that they cannot help those boys and girls because society does not have the capacity or desire to help them . I know some of my friends from high school who very ambitiously started that business, but it soon turned out that there are few of them, and many problems, that is, that society does not change its mechanisms. It is a true example of how good intentions are destroyed.
And do young people have a desire to be helped??
Here's an example: a grandmother called me, she found my phone number by calling the newsroom that published the conversation with me. She told me that where she lives, there are some teenagers who make trouble for everyone, that she met them when she was coming home from the market, and that they were unpleasant to her because she asked them not to demolish the bench. There was a conversation, and she offered to bake them pancakes, which they immediately accepted. Since then, they have been friends, they carry her bag from the market, and they understand each other quite well. It is important, it means that you give each other a chance. There is interest and need. People like that grandmother are rare. I think that no one pays attention to teenagers like the characters in my film because most people see them as barbarians.
Your characters communicate in a special language, What colors their characters?, but also represents an important part of the documentary in the film.
I wrote the script, then according to the guys and girls I chose for the film, I shaped the following versions of the script. At rehearsals, I insisted that they speak their own language. It's interesting, I didn't believe that with the small vocabulary that they have, much can be said. The dialogue supported the minimalist principle of the script and direction in the film. We tried to say as much as possible with as few words as possible, to think more about the subtext of what was said, and to recognize everyday life in that lively dialogue. Without that level of authenticity, this would be a fake movie. And it was important to me that it was my honest story. That when you leave the cinema you can say "I don't like this", but you can't say "that doesn't exist and it's about nothing". I know that there will be people with guards, but this confirms that it is easiest to say "those kids are barbarians, they give negative encouragement to others and a negative image of our society". I don't know of any nation that is so concerned with self-image and not itself.
You mentioned encouragement. don't you think that the way of thinking and living of those guys that you can't help but love even though they are, let's say, offenders, become a role model for their real peers?
I'll give you a counterexample: maybe the news published by your newspaper is a disaster, the question is who reads it and perceives it, right? Such thinking, that the film will set a negative example, is banal. Well, the film does not contain only one message!
Haircut, Clip, so now Barbarians. This is the third film about young people who, with their excessive behavior, want to draw society's attention to themselves, and it seems as if nothing has changed yet..
It's a mistake to expect a movie or three movies to change anything. They help to make changes happen, they develop awareness about them, they raise critical mass, but they will not change anything. Did the films of the sixties help create the '68 revolution? Yes, conceptually they did, but they didn't directly cause it, they just reflected what was boiling in people's heads at the time. This film also reflects some thoughts of my generation and those younger than me towards the environment in which they live. It's not that inefficient. But the film is marginalized in our country in order for it to work. The premises where films were shown for 100 years were sold to casinos and supermarkets! With that action, the state clearly showed that it is better off without films.
