A police detective Miryana goes to investigate the disappearance of a girl in a small dying town in eastern Serbia – region famous for black magic and strong pagan heritage. Confronting the locals during her investigation, Miryana succumbs to the influence of pagan milieu and her investigation becomes an obsession to discover a much bigger secret.


Few weeks after her father’s funeral, a police detective – MIRJANA, (33, stiff, a tomboy ) goes from Belgrade to a small town Topolice to investigate the disappearance of ADELA SIMIĆ, who was temporarily residing there to make videos and write about witchcraft and magic on her internet blog. Mirjana stays in the same, old, brutalist architecture-style hotel as Adela; their rooms are in the same hallway. In the beginning, rational Mirjana rejects the absurd claims of the locals that Adela was a wannabe witch who came to Topolice for an initiation ritual, in fact, Miryana holds these claims as a sign that locals have something to do with Adela’s disappearance. Mirjana finds Adela’s behavior silly and exhibitionistic, hence she suspects that locals did something to Adela because of her provocative ways. Adela’s loudest protestor is GORICA, whose son MILAN killed himself. Gorica claims that Adela enchanted him and drove him to suicide. The only one not claiming that Adela is a witch is a priest JEREMIJA, who considers Adela to be another young person lacking direction and purpose. He believes that Milan, who lived with his mother, in a small and dying town, with no hopes for the future, had many reasons to commit suicide. The more locals try to convince Mirjana in their version of the story, the more Mirjana suspects that they are hiding something from her and that they want to drive her out of Topolice. One day Mirjana finds evidence of witchcraft in her room. She suspects the locals and although she does not believe in black magic, locals convince her that Adela is putting spells on her. Mirjana finds out that witchcraft she found in her room should bring her infertility and madness. Mirjana slowly starts to feel like Adela, isolated and attacked by villagers. Next night, after hearing some noises from Adela room, Mirjana sees a mysterious woman that leaves the hotel. Thinking that this woman was messing up the evidence in Adela’s room, Mirjana follows her. No matter how fast Miryana walks or runs she cannot catch up mysterious woman that seems to walk at a normal pace. Finally, Mirjana loses the woman in the dark forest. Next day, she follows the route from the previous night and in the woods she finds a big, shed snakeskin. The skin is so large that it could envelop two grown human beings. Shedding has black scales. Upon calling her police office for help, Mirjana is additionally confused when an entirely unfamiliar group of crime scene investigators comes from Belgrade. The group is led by KONSTANTIN, a man who she had never seen for all her seven years on the force. They take away the big shed snakeskin. Mirjana again finds witchcraft in her room, but now this spell should bring her death. Enraged she openly confronts the locals and tells them that she is sure that they did something to Adela and that they will not scare her off with this witchcraft. Locals repeat that it is Adela who is putting spells on her. Dejected and not having any rational clue, Mirjana searches again Adela’s room and finds a hidden book of Wallachian myths, where she reads a myth about a dragon that finds lovers among humans. When she finds black scales on the balcony of Adela’s room, just like the ones she found in the woods, Mirjana realizes that what’s happening is beyond her power of understanding. She goes to priest Jeremija to find an explanation, but he just fearfully repeats how she should go back to Belgrade. Although she gets news from Belgrade that Adela was found in a terrible psychological state and that the case is closed, Mirjana decides to stay and find out what is happening. That night Mirjana becomes dragon’s mistress. She realizes that dragon exists and that Adela came there to encounter it. The dragon takes Mirjana to its nest in the mountain and has its way with her in human shape – in the shape of Adela. All “supernatural” experiences that she had were a consequence of dragon’s communication with her. The locals were hiding the dragon from Mirjana, that is why they tried to scare her away. The dragon “sniffed” her out to find out what human shape should it take to become compatible and irresistible to Mirjana. The dragon, in the shape of Adela, gives Mirjana everything she had ever needed; it fulfills her mentally and physically. Mirjana thus far pretty stiff and rational, starts to open to Adela-the dragon. It gives her positive energy; she does not feel lonely anymore, but she stops caring for real life. The dragon has a heroin effect – it does give her both psychological and physical bliss, but when it is not there, it leaves a painful emptiness. In one of these depressed phases when the dragon denied her its presence, Konstantin finds Mirjana to give her the dagger to kill the dragon with. Konstantin tells her that she does not have much choice – she can either kill the dragon or go insane. He tells her that this murder will be an act of kindness because the dragon leaves behind either desolate or dead people. Mirjana is not sure what to do. The dragon unlocked the suppressed parts of her personality and confronted her with her fears. It opened both her mind and body, but Mirjana is afraid of what will happen when the dragon decides to leave her. she knows that the dragon gives her an illusion. Next night, when the dragon came for her, Mirjana secretly takes the dagger. The dragon takes her up to its nest in the mountains. Being aware that the dragon is giving her an illusion and afraid of the part of herself that the dragon revealed to her, Mirjana drives the dagger into Adela-the dragon’s belly. The dragon forcefully pushes her away and Mirjana, too, hurts her belly on a sharp rock. The screaming dragon- girl plunges off the cliff. Mirjana goes down the mountain with a bloody wound on her belly. Looking at the frozen nature around her, she realizes that the legend about the dragon is true – when it dies, nature dies too, and the frost comes before its time.


Pavle Vučković is born in 1982. in Belgrade, Serbia. Finished Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade, Film and TV Directing department. Twice awarded at the Cinefondation competition of Cannes Film Festival for short films Run Rabbit Run (2003.) and Minus (2007.). Run rabbit run was shown in various festivals such as Pusan Film Festival, Cottbus Film Festival, Mar del Plata, Kiev, Milano… Film is in the collection of Museum of Modern Art New York and was shown in Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and in London Tate Modern. Apart short films, he is making and directing music videos, commercials and TV series. His first film Panama was premiered in Cannes Film Festival 2015 Official Selection-Special Screenings section. Panama was sold around the world: Germany, UK, South Korea, Japan, Ukraine…


FROST Director’s statement A few years ago, I came across a myth about a dragon that chooses a young man as his lover in a remote and isolated village. The dragon takes the form of a beautiful girl and visits him every night, giving him an unforgettable love experience. For this young man, this intense relationship disturbs his daily life and he becomes dependent and “drawn” to the dragon, as in any destructive relationship. His mother decides to “save” her son from self-destruction by killing the dragon. She burns his shirt – which dragon leaves during the transformation. However, the young man is not saved, but on the contrary – he goes insane when he realizes that he has lost the feelings he will never feel again. The next morning the whole village gets covered by untimely frost. This myth left a strong impression on me. I realized that this story is, in a way, a continuation to my previous film Panama, also a film about a destructive relationship (solely between two human beings), in which the main character, at the end of the film, finally recognises his narcissism, while looking at his reflection in the frozen pond. Frost metaphorically portrays the path of liberation from narcissism. Miryana, the main protagonist in Frost, confronts herself, her past, her fear of emotional attachment and the associated fear of motherhood. Bearing in mind that the script was written in the period when I was blessed with my daughter, I probably unconsciously confronted all these fears by writing the script and transposed them into the story. For that reason, Miryana is changed at the end of Frost. After her relationship with the dragon, she is carrying a new life. Even though this topic might sound far away from us, I think that it is ultimately important. The emotional alienation of the main character, her narcissistic individualism and her lack of belief in anything (and rationalizing every aspect of spiritual life) are all directions in which all of us from the “modern” world are inevitably moving. This strong psychological and philosophical basis, narrated through a dark fairy tale genre has all the elements of a multi-layered and visually powerful film. The script evolved, deepened and gained more levels during the writing process. The story of maturation has been upgraded with the introduction of a female lead character – detective Mirjana – a fighter in the masculine world. She evolves through a relationship with a dragon, recognizes and accepts her suppressed female side. In the course of her investigation, Mirjana goes back to the mythological, moving from a world of logic to a world of mystical and emotional. Hence the idea was born that Frost should not be a film about a mystical experience but should be a film that will give us a feeling of a mystical experience. Therefore, the entire course of the killing of the dragon has gained an additional allegorical dimension of killing a myth and mythological. This is why Frost is in some way an attempt to re-mythologize the myths. Miryana, the heroine of Forst, is passing through all the archetypal elements of a fairy tale – ( separation from the community, quest into the unknown, confrontation with the dragon…) and she matures and changes from a cynical and emotionally closed person (who does not believe in anything) to a rounded personality that has accepted all aspects of her being – enriched by the mystical experience. The killing of a myth is not the only allegory in Frost. In the utilitarian, technological world, there is also no place for “local” – everything is uniformed and indexed. Frost is situated in Topolice a fictive small, run-down village, which is in every sense set aside. Topolice metaphorically represents the reality of the provinces in Serbia, where residents have no future, no hope for “tomorrow”. The remnants of the magic tradition give them only solace. In this manner, the killing of the dragon has gained another dimension – the killing and disappearance of a tradition. Frost is also interesting as a female version of a dragon-slayer story, but in Frost, the dragon is a symbol of nature, freedom and inner strength. Mirjana, a woman who took over the male role of a “hero”, is given a choice to kill the dragon/myth or not. The possibility to tell a story about a psychological search for spiritual, a search into the suppressed parts of consciousness and deep mythological past through the genre of detective and fantasy film I find very inspiring. Such a detective investigation that considers our laws of logic, our contemporary outlook, our relationship with nature, religion, supernatural, and our relationship with ourselves is something that leaves space for a rich and multilayered film. Frost’s standpoint is non-standard, since it looks at us from the past, and not the other way around.