Renowned Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovic returns to Sarajevo with her second directorial effort, Mother Mara following her debut A Good Wife in 2016.
Showing out of competition as a gala screening, the drama follows a businesswoman, played by Karanović, whose son, played by Pavle Čemerikić, dies suddenly. Unable to process her trauma she develops a deep bond with her son’s friend, played by Vucic Perovic.
Mother Mara was made as a co-production between Serbia’s This & That Productions and Bosnia’s Deblokada with Switzerland’s OkoFilm, Luxembourg’s Paul Thiltges Distributions, Slovenia’s December and Montenegro’s VHS doo. Antipode is handling international sales.
Karanovic talks to Screen about making a film as an international co-production, utlising various labs and co-pro markets, and why she makes films about women who defy cultural expectations.
What inspired you to make this film, taking on the role of mother who defies societal expectations?
I love telling and watching stories about people who fell down and are trying to get back up.
I was intrigued by the situation of a woman of my age who has done everything to feel whole and safe, to have a desirable position in the society and a future for her son. She thinks she has fulfilled all expectations but then the death of her son simply erases everything. I was interested in how she can keep on living and have hopes and motivation.
Both A Good Wife and Mother Mara deal with the meaning of these roles in an ironic way, and with how we play these roles, the role of a good wife or of a mother, what kind of a title it is and what happens when this title is taken away from you. Like an army officer stripped of his rank, what is she left with now?
Mother Mara was made as a multi-national European collaboration. How did that impact on you as a filmmaker?
I had associates from countries I’m not acquainted with and whose language I don’t speak, so it was pretty complicated. With some of them I only worked online. However, it was natural to join forces with Montenegro because of the actor Vučić Perović and set designer Dragana Bacović, and we trusted our old friend Andrea Staka from Okofilm who brought in key contributors.
Paul Thiltges Distributions added a lot of quality to the film as we did excellent post-production and sound mix in Luxembourg.
In addition, Slovenian and Bosnian companies brought in the sound designer, some actors and other crew members.
Which co-production markets and development workshops did you attend with the project?
We went to Venice Gap-Financing Market in 2021 and Sarajevo’s CineLink in 2019. At both of these markets we spoke to numerous international producers who gave us very useful advice.
I am not a professional screenwriter, I work intuitively and that’s why personal opinions of people I can talk to and get some suggestions from are important to me.
Finally, the last market was Work in Progress in Karlovy Vary in 2023, where our great partners at the international sales agency Antipode got on board.
How do you believe you have evolved as a filmmaker between your first and second films?
Working on Mother Mara was much more difficult and challenging. Regardless of how much I worked on the scipt, many of the emotional nuances were unclear to me. I kept looking for them during the shooting and I often didn’t have any clear answers. I let them float in between some established views, in a way. If they are so ambivalent, maybe they should stay that way, because life is like that too.
In A Good Wife, the heroine has to conquer her position, she has to reach some goals she had set for herself. In Mother Mara, she had already achieved everything and surrounded herself with walls, it’s a kind of a fortress that suddenly collapses and she stays unprotected.
This situation of complete exposure, a total erosion of the personality and the world around her, for me this is something that’s really hard to understand. When such things happen to me, my first instinct is to run, to disappear. That’s why it was complicated for me as I didn’t have such an experience. I just followed my gut.
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