Lights On has taken international sales rights for “When the Phone Rang” and has released the film’s trailer (below) ahead of its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on Aug. 12.
The film is written and directed by Iva Radivojević (“Aleph,” “Evaporating Borders”), and is based on Radivojević’s personal experience of leaving the crisis-stricken Yugoslavia of the 1990s.
Through a reconstruction of an important phone call, the film “addresses the nature of remembering and dislocation,” according to a press statement. In Lana’s 11-year-old mind the phone call erases her entire country, history and identity.
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The phone call as a recurring event in the story brings together a series of recollections, which are assembled to build a larger story. Each memory is called forth by a phone call. Thus, the film is divided into eleven events, and eleven phone calls. Each event begins with a phone ringing and ends with the packing of suitcases and departure.
In a statement, Radivojević said: “Writer Dubravka Ugrešić notes that memories appear as if from a dream, returning to haunt the present. This phone call is one such memory, and it brings with it a slew of others – discombobulated and out of order. The aim of this film is to give these memories a container, all the while inviting witnesses.”
“When the Phone Rang” is produced by Andrijana Sofranić Šućur and Marija Stojnić for Set Sail Films in Serbia, and Radivojević for Ivaasks Films in the U.S., in association with Madeleine Molyneaux of Picture Palace Pictures in the U.S.
The film will compete in Locarno’s Cineasti del Presenti section. This is dedicated to first or second feature films, and in particular films that are “radical, uncompromising, adventurous, shot through with genuine curiosity about all the possibilities of cinema,” according to the festival.
