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Press Report / Day 3

19.07.2021.

Press Report / Day 3

On the third day of the Palić European Film Festival, July 19, Vitaliy Akimov, director of The Boy, Lajla Pakalnina, director of In the Mirror, and representatives of the AFIFS network: Ilija Tatić (European Film Festival), Srđan Savić (Domestic Feature Film Festival of Acting Achievements “Film Encounters” in Niš), Sanja Conić (LIFFE Leskovac) and Damjana Jovanović (Šumadija International Film Festival, Kragujevac) spoke at a press conference on the Great Terrace in Palić.

Vitaly Akimov spoke about making his documentary, in which he shows his family in Arsenyev, a Russian provincial town: "This film interested me because it was a way to address my father. He was not present in my life when I was little boy. It was just a conversation after 23 years, and then I thought it should be recorded by camera. Then I intuitively started thinking about where to find my main character. I wrote that it was a kind of film about a boy who doesn't have a father. When I started working with my father, a little boy who lived with him actually became the main character of my film."

About ten-year-old Stepan, his brother's stepson and the main protagonist of the film, Vitaly Akimov added: "It seemed to me that he looks a lot like me. He is surrounded by a difficult family situation, but that does not affect him. He manages to be a happy boy, somehow. I really hope that he will preserve his character traits, and I think that I have to take the responsibility, and help him do that."

Laila Pakalnina based her film In the Mirror on the famous fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which she translated into a modern context. On how she came up with the idea for the film, she said: “First I became interested in selfies, in the format itself. I even started my own Facebook account just because of the movie. I had to see how that communication goes. Selfie itself is a very cool thing. You communicate with others by looking at yourself, and it’s actually a mirror. At first I didn't know how to research this topic, but then it suddenly dawned on me - in Snow White, the queen speaks with a mirror, so it's actually a selfie. That's how that fairy tale came to me, but it's also an archetype that everyone in the world knows. I decided to make a film that is not about queens and princesses, but to have crossfit, parkourists, and to do things that are modern. But essentially it's the same story."

On the fourth day of the festival, on Tuesday, July 20, on the Summer Stage in Palić, Main Competition Program at 9 p.m. presents film Natural Light by Hungarian director Dénes Nagy and the Parallels and Encounters program presents films Rainbow by Montenegrin director Aleksandar Vujović (17h), The Shift by Reinis Kalviņš from Latvia (17:15) and German Lessons by Bulgarian director Pavel G. Vesnakov at 7 p.m. at the Abazia cinema in Palić.

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