We have to get out of their mud

They are considered to be a movie, and before that a book The summer when I learned to fly, improved relations between Serbs and Croats more than anyone since the war. That is why their authors, director Radivoje Raša Andrić and writer Jasminka Petrović, real winners of the "Svetislav Pribićević" award, which is awarded by the Serbian National Council in Croatia for the improvement of Serbian-Croatian relations. The laureates wrote a letter thanking the Serbian National Council for the award, but also "children throughout the region who see further and more beautiful than us. And thanks to the young people in Serbia who are teaching us these days how to fly and how to shine". The letter was read at the reception traditionally organized by the Serbian Council on the occasion of the Catholic Christmas in Zagreb, where annual awards are presented.

The state dignitaries and members of the Serbian Council applauded them, and the Serbian ambassador to Croatia, Jelena Milić, demonstratively left the meeting. As she explained, the applause of the Serbian National Council was a sign that they support the students who are against the president of her country.

Part of the Serbian and Croatian public, as well as the Serbs in Croatia, assessed her gesture as a diplomatic blunder, bad for interstate relations and good for the film and the book, since they started to be talked about unplanned, possibly even to the same extent as on the occasion of their entry among the audience and readers, that is, on the occasion of great awards - for example, the "Golden Arena" and the Audience Award at the Pula Film Festival. Well, it was the reason for this, another (see "Vreme" February 2, 2022 and June 28, 2022) conversation about They fly when I learned to fly.

"WEATHER" When it is said - ambassador, what do you think? What is his job?? What qualities does it possess?, and with which he deserved the task entrusted to him?

RADIVOJE RAŠA ANDRIĆ: I wouldn't talk about the ambassador's job because I don't know much about it, but I think that this country has gotten to where it is because there are unskilled or insufficiently skilled people in jobs they don't know enough about. Or they don't know anything. The ambassador certainly deals with diplomacy, diplomacy is a conversation with gloves, so everything should be measured and kind of fine, somehow I understand that this is the main thing. I have met several ambassadors because I have toured with films in various cities in Europe and the world. The last ambassador I saw was a lady in Bratislava, when it was being shown Year. They came, they helped me with the translation, they are trying to spread the word about the culture and art of our country, and that is divine. And the best man I met who was an ambassador, unfortunately, is no longer with us, is Miodrag Perišić. He was the ambassador to Canada - he did not graduate from diplomatic school, but came to that position as a very educated man, an erudite. There was a time when educated people were chosen as ambassadors, people who would represent their people in the best light, and of course, who knew a foreign language.

Have you personally experienced the gesture of Ambassador Jelena Milić?? Maybe she doesn't know what your movie is about The summer when I learned to fly, what was his goal and what did he achieve?

I cannot judge the lady who is now the ambassador in Zagreb because I do not know her. I don't even know if she saw the movie.

But what do you think?, when Ambassador Milić got upset because of the applause for your letter, for what reason/ Who was she really upset with??

I cannot say with certainty what upset her, it must have been provoked by that sentence, which is quite benign about students and young people in general in Serbia, so her gesture was, what would young people say - overreacting. I also don't know if it's a diplomatic gaffe, I'll repeat: I don't know enough about the subject. I know a little about the movie. And I don't know a little more about life, about diplomacy, about gaffes or non-gaffes, and about scandals or non-scandals. Ambassadors are not the only ones in charge of spreading good relations between majority nations and minorities, they are, it seems to me, just a formality. It is much more important that we, ordinary people, establish and maintain and develop these relationships. This is where artists are the best ambassadors, because they cross borders the easiest. After the wars in the Balkans, the artists were the first to start crossing the borders that still couldn't be crossed, instead you take one bus to your border and then you walk across no man's land, and then you get on another bus or someone there wait for him to drive you further. I think the connections between artists and ordinary people are much more important than political ones. Sometimes we have to work in spite of our politicians on both sides, but by God, that's the duty of an artist. An artist is a man whose task is to cross borders and provoke, otherwise he is not an artist. That is much more important than diplomacy itself - what is human and from the heart, not by duty.

Croatian public, the Serbian public in Croatia and part of the local public saw the gesture of Ambassador Jelena Milić as an insult to the nation to which she belongs. And yet, the government here behaves as if nothing happened.

The fact that the local authorities do not react to the actions of their ambassador does not surprise me too much, because that is their principle of operation. First, they pretend to be stupid for everything that happens and keep silent, and then they will deny it, and then offer some services to sort of fix the matter. They are silent now because the move of the ambassador in Zagreb was obviously bad, so it is better to be silent in order to forget, than to talk about it.

Last October in Zagreb, at the opening of the Serbian Cultural Center, Minister of Foreign Affairs Marko Đurić was full of nice words and intentions about developing good neighborly relations. How could Ambassador Milić's gesture be interpreted in that context?

Based on that procedure, as well as the actions of people from the top of the government and its lower levels, it has been clear for years that they work only for the government and not for the state. They see themselves as if they are the state and that's why they work for themselves. So this is one of those moves. The way these people work would be best described as - smooth on the outside and ravenous on the inside. So there is pomp from the outside, and those buildings, Belgrade on the water, everything looks pompous to say the least, but in fact it was poorly built. So in everything, and here is also in this reaction of the ambassador: as if it is important to these people in power that it only seems that everything is ok, and it doesn't matter that it is not ok. Which is, of course, terrible. Practically, it all boils down to marketing: we are going to show that everything is great and that we do great things, and behind that there is a gap. There is only a shell, and there is no essence.

At the Pula Festival 2022. years Year won two awards, "Golden Arena" and the Audience Award, The film received a rating of 4.,87! What can I say about this?, except to state for the umpteenth time that peoples and politicians do not have the same taste and understanding?

That Audience Award provoked the Croatian distributor to take the film into distribution. Until then, they weren't sure if the film would be good to show in Croatia, and this convinced them. So both of these awards are, as far as I'm concerned, a very important moment. I knew the film was good while I was editing it - I'm such a good director that I can recognize what's good, what's so-so, and what's bad - and I knew that it would have a considerable viewership in Serbia. But it was important to me, and to all of us who made it, that in addition to the success in Serbia, the film should also be successful in Croatia, because the story of Serbian-Croatian relations is always present in it. And it was logical that we hoped that the film would be seen and loved in both countries. It turned out that this happened, the film only then fulfilled its function. If it had been seen only in Serbia, I would not have been as happy as I am, because the film was later shown on HRT several times, which is not a very common case with films from Serbia.

Were there any negative comments??

There were several people from both sides who said that it was a fairy tale, that it was impossible for a citizen of Serbia to have such a nice vacation in Croatia. I know that's not true. I go to Croatia on vacation almost every summer since the first years after the war, when it was still shaggy. Several years ago, when we dared to go with Belgrade plates, my wife was followed by a guy on a motorcycle in Dubrovnik, and she got scared. At a traffic light, he breaks through between the cars and reaches her, knocks on the window, she opens it a little in fear, and he says to her: "Thank you very much for coming again". There. That's how ordinary people work.

Like many movies in recent years, i The summer when I learned to fly is a co-production between Serbia and Croatia (with Bulgaria and Slovakia), realized despite unfavorable interstate relations.

It is completely natural that there are Serbian-Croatian, Serbian-Bosnian and Serbian-Montenegrin co-productions because they share the same language. And there, of course, is the law of the market. Why show a movie or series to an audience of 7 million people when you can do it for 14 million? After all, we are all very small countries with small budgets and small cinemas. The money that you get in Serbia at the competition for the film is not enough, so even when writing the script, you think about how you could include Croatian crew members or actors in the film. And then, when you get money from that country as well, then you have the right to ask for money from Euroimage, which supports co-productions, especially those in the Balkans, because that is also one way of pacification. Because when people cooperate, then they won't go to war.

photo: zoran ilic

About an unpleasant event into which you were drawn against your will, You speak very calmly....

I'm sorry that my answers are not sharper, but I'm a well-mannered person and I don't know how to spit on people, nor do I want to. I think accepting the lack of manners may have brought us here. First, the radicals and various similar parties, and then the SNS, lowered the level of conversation into the mud. Not on the lowest branches, but in the mud. To the man who leads this country, the argument is "so what"! Wait, please, we stopped using that argument in the fifth grade because it was still embarrassing to say "so what" because it means you're stupid. You have no argument, but you say "so what". They managed to draw people who are not from that party into such a dialogue. And when you fight in their field, in the mud, of course they will win. We have to get out of that mud. That's why, in my opinion, education is the first thing to work on.