Fifteen years without Sonja Savić

Sonja Savić died 15 years ago. Only then did the public realize who it had lost. It's as if it didn't suit her until then to admit to someone whose behavior is not to her taste, who doesn't fit in, that he is special and unique.

We talked two years before she was found motionless in her apartment, for a good reason: she finished the experimental film "Waiting for God(A)" of which she was the director and choreographer, in which she played one character and lent her voice to the others. We talked over Turkish coffee, in the "Trandafilović" restaurant, which has been gone for a long time.

She agreed to the conversation because we are namesakes, she said, and because she was being told about Beckett. She said that she will tell "the way she thinks and the way she is", and it's up to me what I do with it.

At that time, Sonja had already been rejected a long time ago. Everyone who passed by our table recognized her, and quickly looked for a table as far away from ours as possible. A circle of empty tables formed around our table. At one point, in the middle of talking, she asked me if it bothered me and said "don't worry, it's because of me".

Whether it was because of those tables or because she had exhausted the story about Beckett, she just started talking about herself.  

"Why do I have a bad time in the city I live in, in the country I come from - I have no idea."

Resentment or even anger towards such an environment was not felt. Disappointment - yes.

Read more Interview - Sonja Savić: Plant keeper

 "If it wasn't for Slovenia, I wouldn't have survived the nineties, and the same may be true for the last years as well." Jan Cvitan called me for Bread and milk, he won the Golden Lion for that film as a debutant in Venice, and then I acted in his next film, From grave to grave, for which he was declared the most promising young director in San Sebastian. Last year, because of that film, I was declared the actress of the year in Slovenia. Through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I received a reward: some crystal and three diplomas. I took the diplomas, and I left the crystal to the Ministry, so that they would not see that it happens to someone else from here to receive an award outside of Serbia, apart from those three or four members (of the SPS) who are supposedly worldly people."

Nice things were happening somewhere else

Nice and good things were happening to her somewhere, but she didn't exist here.

"I was surprised when they remembered me in Sarajevo in 1996. Then, thanks to Senad Pećinin, the editor of Dan, I premiered my first video there. Here, some circle of intellectuals who worked during the war wanted to see what Sonja Savić was doing. I was also surprised when they put me on some lists in Croatia, among the ten foreign films was An. They told me our beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Sonja Savić. And here?"

"I've been trying to maintain urban culture here, but no one notices." I also know that the reform of costumes, make-up and mise-en-scene in the film of the eighties can be attributed to Sonja Savić, but again nothing to anyone. Skye skirt and jacket on the naked body were not worn before me, I painted my nails black with ink because there was no such nail polish. I am also responsible for the new mise-en-scène, the setting of the body must be precise, to know exactly how far your shoulder will go back, what you do with your hips while sitting, how the blouse will fall from your shoulders. But no one notices that."

Always kind of weird

In fact, they noticed her from the moment she appeared, and from the beginning she was kind of strange to them. But she was also excellent, so they kept quiet. Until the first opportunity she gave them as an excuse to get rid of her, she was so different and inflexible. To stop standing out and poking eyes.

She made her debut in the late seventies, as a teenager in the film Butterfly cloud, so that in the eighties, movies Living like any normal world, An, Sugar water, Strangler against strangler, Balkan spy, Jackdaw, became a great actress. At one Pula festival, she received the "Golden Arena" for three films, although some members of the jury claimed that the same actress did not play in them. For a role in a movie Life is Beautiful she was awarded at the festival in Venice.

Read more Excluded from the world

In the 1990s, he recorded less often (We are not angels, Introduction to another life, Neither in heaven nor on earth, Hilarious tragedy), starts directing (The first Serbian techno vaudeville, Supernaut Belgrade underground, Player), and founded the alternative scene "Pogon" in the Youth Center of Belgrade. In this century, she shot two films in Slovenia - Bread and milk i From grave to grave, and three in Serbia - South-southeast i Party. Movie Forbidden love was shown less than a year after her death, and she starred in seven episodes of the TV series The storks will return.

Much more than a street

"Nadežda Petrović" art gallery in Čačak has been organizing the event "Sonja's September" every September since 2011.

With the will of Sonja's mother, Mikaine Savić, they were entrusted with the actress' artistic legacy, as well as the family house and property in Donja Gorevnica near Čačak.

Part of the relatives disputed the will, but the Gallery recently announced that they expect that the house and yard will soon be legally registered with the City of Čačak as the owner, as Sonja's mother determined in her will back in 2011.

Sonja Savić was born in 1961 in Čačak. She died on September 23, 2008 in Belgrade. She was buried in Donja Gorevnica near Čačak.

At the beginning of 2020, councilor in the Čačak Municipality Assembly Violeta Marković opposed the proposal that a street in that city be named after Sonja Savić. She explained that it "would not be a good message to young people because of the lifestyle she led."

One of the comments on Twitter on that occasion read: "Sonja Savić is much more than any street".

Read daily news, analysis, commentary and interviews at www.vreme.com