↩

When the Phone Rang

Iva Radivojević
Serbia / USA
73'

Through an intimate reconstruction of an important phone call, When the Phone Rang investigates dislocation and the nature of remembering. In the protagonist’s 11-year-old mind, this phone call erases her entire country, history, and identity and hides its existence in books, films, and memories of those born before 1995.



Rarely does a film evoke the same emotions as reading a novel in the way that Iva Radivojević’s second feature film does. When the Phone Rang carries within it all the power and gentleness of a tome by Isabel Allende. A film molded within a visual structure composed of time images that refuse explicit action, poetic repetition and uses editing as its main means of narration. It would be too easy to say that Radivojević’s film is (yet another) interrogation of the subjective processes and procedures of memory – for its great achievement is to propose a completely new way of looking back into the abyss of the post-Yugoslavian wars, an approach similar in spirit to the lyrical cinema of Catarina Vasconcelos. (Flavia Dima)



Screening date and location

September 28th, 6:30 PM, Cinema Elvire Popesco

Tickets

Awards & Festivals

Iva Radivojević

Iva Radivojević was born in Belgrade and spent her early years in Yugoslavia, Cyprus and eventually NYC. She is an artist and filmmaker who currently divides her time between Athens and Lesbos. Iva’s films have screened at the New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Rotterdam IFF, CPH:DOX, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, DocLisboa, Museum of Modern Art (NYC) and others. She is the recipient of the Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Jerome Fellowship, NYFA Fellowship, Princess Grace Special Project Award and Film Fellowship. Avenue of The Living, her new art book, was recently published by Big Black Mountain Press. She’s a PhD candidate at Villa Arson in Nice.



  • Technical sheet
  • Production and distribution
  • Writer, Director, Editor : Iva Radivojević
  • Cast: Natalija Ilinčić , Srna Vasić, Vasilije Zečević, Danica Maksimović, Anton Augustinov, Mila Drobnjak, Dunja Vladisavljević , Ivana Pančić, Ibro Sakić, Slavica Bajčeta
  • Director of Photography: Martin DiCicco
  • Music By: Iva Radivojević
  • 16mm Film Lab Processing: NFI
  • Sound Recordist: Bojan Palikuća
  • Sound Design & Mix: Leandros Ntounis @ I Heard Voices - Atena, Grecia
  • Color: Dimitris Karteris - Atena, Grecia
  • Production Companies: Set Sail Films, Ivaasks Films, in association with Picture Palace Pictures
  • Producers: Andrijana Sofranić Šućur, Marija Stojnić, Madeleine Molyneaux, Iva Radivojević
  • Co-Producer: Genoveva Petrovits

Screens

International Feature Film Competition

All films →

Eat the Night

Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel | Duration 105'

Pablo, a small-time dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality...

Cu Li Never Cries

Phạm Ngọc Lân | Duration 92'

A woman tries to cling onto dimming links to her past after inheriting a pygmy slow loris from her long-estranged husband; meanwhile, her niece prepares for marriage as the young couple ponders their uncertain future together. The present and the complex echoes of Vietnamese history intertwine with a contemplative and poetic perspective.

Malqueridas

Tana Gilbert | Duration 75'

They are women. They are mothers. They are prisoners serving long sentences in a correctional facility in Chile. Their children grow up far from them, but remain in their hearts. In prison, they find affection in other partners who share their situation. Malqueridas builds their stories through images captured by them with cell phones inside the prison, recovering the collective memory of a forgotten community.

bluish

Lilith Kraxner & Milena Czernovsky | Duration 83’

Errol and Sasha, two somewhat disoriented characters in their twenties, are each aimlessly drifting through a city’s gloomy winter days. Whilst casting a soft gaze on fragments of their everyday lives, people, stories, places and realities start to overlap and intertwine. bluish describes a fragile state of being, a condition or rather an atmosphere of ambiguity and longing.

When the Phone Rang

Iva Radivojević | Duration 73'

Through an intimate reconstruction of an important phone call, When the Phone Rang investigates dislocation and the nature of remembering. In the protagonist’s 11-year-old mind, this phone call erases her entire country, history, and identity and hides its existence in books, films, and memories of those born before 1995.

Maia – Portrait with Hands

Alexandra Gulea | Duration 90'

Maia (Alexandra Gulea) was born into a semi-nomadic population under ethnic cleansing. Her granddaughter, the director, who shares the same name, has produced a vivid visual reconstruction of her journey through the 20th century. Her history blends into the larger History.

Fire of Wind

Marta Mateus | Duration 72'

The vine bore fruit and it's harvest time. Soraia, a young girl, cuts herself. Blood mixes with wine. A black bull is on the loose. Up in the oak trees, time swells, and a community takes shelter. They share bread and wine, memories and dreams, the history of a landscape. We enter a long night, where nature also speaks. The fiery wind that brings the heatwaves is burning.

Meniu →