A Film a Week - Wind, Talk to Me / Vetre, pričaj sa mnom

 previously published on Cineuropa

Stefan Đorđević started his artistic path as a non-professional actor in Nikola Ležaić’s Tilva Rosh (2010), playing one of the leads. After that, he lensed, wrote and directed a number of shorts and music videos, often collaborating with his friends and family members. His debut feature, Wind, Talk to Me, has just premiered in the Tiger Competition of IFFR. This docu-fiction might be both Đorđević’s most complete and most personal film to date. And since its auteur and protagonist is dealing with his mother’s death, there was probably no other way around it.

However, Đorđević opens his movie in a semi-abstract way, with a naturally dim-lit close-up of his hand touching a tree and saying a prayer to the wind. He is actually on his way home to his native village, and the stop he has made with his car leads to an encounter with a police officer, from whom he receives a warning. He is obviously in distress, and this will be further compounded when he accidentally hits a stray dog with his car.

At home, his whole extended family has got together – his grandmother and grandfather, brother, aunt, cousin and nephews. Everybody misses his mother, Negrica, but they are all trying to keep their spirits up. He probably misses her the most, not just for personal reasons, but also because she was the protagonist of his unfinished documentary portrait project. And the late mum was quite a character: a free-spirited and free-minded woman who lived in a trailer outside the village, in the woods and on the shore of the lake. She lived her life according to her own rules and unorthodox beliefs.

Stefan’s plan is to move into the trailer, spend some time there and try to finish the film, somehow. Maybe the first step towards it would be healing and adopting the dog he injured. The family is willing to provide support and assistance with his endeavour, but his lashing out at them signals that his wounds might run even deeper than he originally thought.

Thus far, it all seems like a typical documentary self-portrait, laced with some older footage woven into the deeper layers of it that serves as a perfect way for viewers to understand the filmmaker’s bond with his mother and the emptiness that haunts him now that she is gone. But the way he “directs” his extended family members as supporting cast members opens another meta-layer, and because of this, Wind, Talk to Me plays out like a small, intimate, but also universal, fiction film.

The artistry continues on the craft level, as cinematographer Marko Brdar lends an outsider’s eye both to the family dynamics and to the ambience. Julij Zornik’s sound design subtly enhances the sounds of nature, while the moody, synth-powered score by Ivan Judaš highlights the emotion. The pacing set by the joint editing effort of Tomislav Stojanović and Dragan von Petrović is deliberately moderate and comes across as quite natural for the processes of grieving and moving on. In the end, Đorđević manages to make Wind, Talk to Me a captivating film, both about his mother and about himself coping with her passing.