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Press Conference July 21st, 2026

21.07.2026.

33rd European Film Festival Palić – Report from the Press Conference on Day 4 of the Festival

Koxi: The Main Heroines of Elfriede Jelinek’s Novel Women as Lovers Are Very Close to Contemporary Society

"The Miserable Mother" actors Rosa Landers and Theo Colarusso; "Mo Papa" director Eeva Mägi; "How to Talk to Lydia?" director Rusudan Gaprindashvili; the creators of "Women as Lovers" – director Koxi and screenwriter Antonio De Luca; "All About the King Named Petar" director Anita Panić; MIOB Laboratories for Cultural, Creative and Festival Journalism mentor Neil Young; Her Lens programme selector and participant in the MIOB panel Le Lab Femmes De Cinéma Mirona Radu; as well as Saša Radojević, author of the book Serbian Cinema: The Sixties, spoke at the press conference held at the Grand Terrace on the fourth day of the 33rd European Film Festival Palić, Tuesday, July 21.

Rosa Landers, lead actress in “The Miserable Mother,” screened in the Official Selection, spoke about her experience during the filming process: "We had a rehearsal space with a sofa and all the other elements that looked exactly like the set in the film. We went through the scenes one by one and improvised together – we improvised through movement, without speaking, exploring how we could interact with one another, with the baby, and with the objects, toys, and dolls in the space. Sometimes it felt more like a dance, and sometimes like a series of repetitive movements. We recorded everything, then watched the footage together and laughed a lot along the way. Afterwards, we selected the movements we liked the most, added the text, and assembled everything like a puzzle."

Eeva Mägi, director of "Mo Papa", which was screened as part of the Official Selection, spoke about working without a written script: "The fact that I did not write the script does not mean that there was no script. The script existed, but in my head. I had a story and an idea, and then we developed them together with the crew, the actors, and the other collaborators. I shared my vision with them, we began shooting, and throughout the process we continued to shape the film together. In a way, the story gradually revealed itself and took form as we filmed it."

Koxi, director of "Women as Lovers," screened as part of the Germany in Focus programme, based her film on Elfriede Jelinek’s novel of the same name. "I had been thinking about making a film based on this novel for a long time. I first read it as a teenager, and what fascinated me was how closely the main characters resembled people in contemporary society. My relationship with them has remained unchanged, even though the novel was originally published in the 1970s. Almost fifty years later, I could still identify with the main characters," said the German director.

On the final day of the festival, Wednesday, July 22, "Echoes of Saint George" by Jelena Bajić Jočić will be screened out of competition in the Official Selection at the Summer Stage in Palić at 9 p.m. On the same evening, director and actor Radoš Bajić will receive the Aleksandar Lifka Award in the category of domestic filmmakers, along with the awards for the festival’s best films. In the Parallels and Encounters programme at the Abazija Cinema in Palić, “To the Victory!” by Valentyn Vasyanovych will be screened at 6 p.m.

The European Film Festival Palić is 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 partners and media sponsors.

For more than two decades, Gorki List has been a valued partner of the European Film Festival Palić, serving both as an integral part of its visual identity and as the sponsor of the Gorki List Audience Award, which encourages audiences to engage more deeply with the films presented at the festival.