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Emilija Gašić: It all started with the tapes we recorded during the bombing

26.07.2024.

A press conference was held on the seventh day of the 31st European Film Festival Palić at the Grand Terrace on Friday, July 26. Speakers included members of the crew of the film “78 Days” – director Emilija Gašić, producer Miloš Ivanović, and actresses Viktorija Vasiljević, Milica Gicić, Tamara Gajović, Maša Ćirović, and Jelena Đokić.

Other participants were director Marko Raat, actor Data Chachua, directors Andrzej Jakimowski, Ádám Breier, and Dragan Jovićević, producer Andrea Ausztrics, as well as festival representatives – Ilija Tatić, executive producer, Miroslav Mogorović, program director, Radoslav Zelenović, director of the festival, and Nikolaj Nikitin, programmer of the Official Selection, who summarized the impressions from this year’s edition of the festival.

Emilija Gašić, the director of the film "78 Days", reflected on the origin of the idea for the film: "It definitely started from my personal feeling, because I was a child and I was seven and a half years old. I remember that period very well. It started with my tapes that we recorded during the bombing, and during the pandemic I returned to those tapes. I wanted to make a film that looks like it was recorded on one cassette, which you find 25 years later".

Regarding the specific format in which the film was shot, Gašić said: "Those cassettes and cameras marked that period. We all remember it by VHS, or the Hi-8 format that was more widespread. Whoever had a camera in the house, chances are that they had that particular camera".

Marko Raat, the director of the film "8 Views of Lake Biwa", which was screened the previous day as part of the Parallels and Encounters competition program, discussed the genesis of his film: "My starting point was magical thinking as a way of thinking. Then I began to look for the basis for all this. I found a wonderful book with a similar title to the movie, which gave me the freedom to set those old Japanese love stories in a western setting. Those stories are universal".

Data Chachua, the main actor in the film "Panopticon", screened in the Parallels and Encounters program, spoke about his relationship with director George Sikharulidze: "We trusted each other and became good friends. In the beginning, we talked about simple things, life, my character in the film, then we discovered that our lives are similar, too. At first, this similarity was almost scary, but we got used to it over time".

Andrzej Jakimowski, the director of the film "Song of Goats", screened in the Parallels and Encounters program, based his work on the story of his friend, an art photographer, who found himself in a similar situation as the main character of the film. "The story is true, and that's why I used it. But at the same time, it talks about and shows the situation of my generation, my friends. Maybe it's also about my country, about Europe," said Jakimowski, who shot the film on the Greek island of Nisyros. "The Greek mentality is great, and I think it is quite similar to the Serbian one," concluded the Polish director.

The European Film Festival Palić has been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, the City of Subotica, the European Union through the Creative Europe MEDIA program, as well as numerous friends and media partners.