While weddings are supposed to be happy occasions, one man’s impending marriage leads to a series of bittersweet emotionally fraught and drunken reunions.
After twelve years in Canada, Nele returns to his native city Belgrade to get married to his girlfriend Maya. He soon falls back in with his old pals, and is forced to re-examine his priorities and his plans for the future when he meets his old love again. Shadows of the past hang heaviest over all the lives we see: Nele and his friends are still haunted by the suicide of their friend Sima, who took his own life shortly after Nele’s departure. But there are more losses and mental scars, which gradually come to light.
This award-winning drama explores the émigrés dilemma of never feeling at home, of repulsion for the old and the new, and the most distracting feeling of all, nostalgia. –Taskovski Films
Oleg Novković (b. 1968, Belgrade) studied film and television direction in his native city at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, where he was taught by Srdjan Karanović, a graduate of FAMU. In 1993 he made his directorial debut Say Why You Are Leaving Me (Kaži zašto me ostavi), which won awards at festivals at home and abroad. His filmography includes a number of television programmes and full-length documentaries, among them Normal People (Normalni ljudi, 2001), Invisible People (Nevidljivi ljudi, 2002), Children (Deca, 2002), Picnic (Izlet), and Goodbye, Mama, I Am Leaving (Dovidjenja, mama, ja idem!), both 2003. He first worked with writer Milena Marković on the screenplay and shooting of the documentary Miners’ Opera (Rudarska opera, 2005). Novković won a Nipkow Programme Fellowship (1998), took part in a Master Class under the aegis of the European Film Academy (1999) and works on international projects. —Karlovy Vary IFF