Interview with the film “ Yugo Florida ” on father, son, the brightest car: Sarajevo

Yugo FloridaThe first feature film of the veteran of the television series Vladimir Tagić, celebrated his world premiere during the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival which ends on Friday.

The title of the father-son drama refers to a car model, which is a bit of a mirror of the state of its protagonist. Simply check the synopsis: “The clumsy and almost useless zoran life – which presents a roommate from Pothead, an ex -girlfriend unavailable, and a work on reality TV – is upset when his distant and intolerable father is diagnosed with a terminal disease and that Zoran goes to help him during his last weeks.”

Tagić wrote the script with Milan Ramšak Marković. The cast presents the popular Serbian television actor Andrija Kuzmanovic, Nikola Pejakovic, Snjezana Sinovcic Siskov and Goran Slave.

The Serbian director sat with THR In Sarajevo to discuss the inspirations of the film, the car and the reality TV references and its next idea for a film.

Going from the television series to the film was not a big jump for Tagić. “Films are the thing I have always wanted to do,” he shared. “I needed a lot of time to finance the film. It’s not that simple, especially when you are a first director, to find funding. This is why I just seized the chance to work on television programs when I had the opportunity.”

His own experiences inspired the film. “A year before my father fell ill and died, an uncle was sick, and I went to the hospital to visit him, and I thought:” Oh, my God, I am not ready for my parents to be sick, “he recalls. “And then, three or four months later, my father fell ill. And during the last six months of his life, I felt the strongest feelings I have ever felt. ”

Continued the filmmaker: “Your whole world overturns, and you have this illusion in your head that you may learn something for life. This is how our brain works. We want to have a sense of everything. illusion.

Tagić realized that he had never seen a film attacking this “idea that a painful experience does not mean that it is a learning experience. Maybe it’s just pain, and it’s good to accept it. ” Explained the director: “Zoran is this guy who is looking for a way to change his life, to find the meaning. He says [at one point in the movie]: “I’m more mature now.” But in the end, he realizes that he is not really.

Manufacturing Yugo Florida helped the creator. “It was something I had to do to let him out,” he said. “It was my kind of catharsis. I think this process helped me let go and continue my life. This experience for me was cathartic in a way, because I am not a guy who will go to psychotherapy.”

So what’s new with the title Yugo Florida? It turns out that it is the name of a tailgate car model of the automaker Yugoslav Zastava which was produced between 1987 and 2008. “The car has such an exotic name,” said Tagić. “In this name, you put Yugoslavia and Florida next to each other, and it is a strange combination. What is Yugo from Florida? This name was so funny for me. It’s absurd because it seems exotic, but it is the most brilliant car in the world.”

He may want to inspire the sunny beaches of Florida and the warmth of Miami, “but essentially, it is the most crazy and most striking car in the world,” he concluded. “So for me, it was the perfect metaphor for my main characters and their life. Their life is full of imperfections, full of things they do not understand and problems that they cannot solve, and they don’t know why. And this car is like that.”

Zoran’s reality TV work is a reference to the filmmaker’s personal life. “It was the job I did right after finishing the shooting school,” said Tagić THR. “I was doing Big brother reality. And these long quarter -nights, which you see in the film, made me completely crazy. I was in a state of perpetual insomnia ”, just like Zoran.

“His main problem is loneliness,” said the director. “And Paul Schrader, the famous screenwriter whom I really admire,” says what a work in a film represents and how, when he writes a character, he thinks of the work he does as a metaphor for the internal problem of this character. It’s the same thing in Taxi driver Or American Gigolo Or First reformed. So I thought of what is the perfect work to represent the solitude of a main character, then he simply clicked – it is perfect to have a guy who looks at other people, including when they sleep, in black and white. “”

Tagić already has a new film idea and a script with his Yugo Florida writing partner. “It is a story that is, in a way, a mirror of this story,” he said THR. “This story concerned my relationship with my father, and the next one will concern the relationship between my mother and my sister. So I’m going to do the female version of Yugo Florida. I mean, it’s going to be a Completely different film, but, in my head, it’s like a duo. There is a kind of connection. »»