LOGLINE

Dragana gives up marrying Momo two days before the date.His dangerously stubborn father forces the disastrous wedding into happening.

SUMMARY

Two days before the wedding the bride said she will not do it. Even if everything is ready and everyone knows about it. Leso, the merciless patriarch of groom’s family, offers this to the rebellious bride – do the
bloody wedding, act it out, and then go wherever you want the next day. She accepts. The offended groom still hopes she will stay. A traditional wedding includes a series of absurd steps, soaked with alcohol, gunfire and dynamite. This farcical event will also bring worst of their personal anxieties into play.

SHORT BIO OF DIRECTOR

Ivan Marinovic is an award-winning Montenegrin director, screenwriter and producer known for the film The BlackPin. He was born in 1984 in Kotor, Montenegro. He graduated in industrial design at the Politecnico di Milano Universityin 2007 and received a master’s degree in film directing at the famous Prague film and television academy – FAMU in 2011. He is a winner of a Sam Spiegel award for best script in Jerusalem Film Lab in 2014. He is an alumni of otherprestigious programs, such as MFI2, Midpoint, Berlinale Script Station and Script East where he won KrzstofKieslowski award for best East European script. His feature debut The Black Pin premiered in 2016 at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s Competition program. The film featured at over 45 international and regional festivals, including SEE Fest Los Angeles, West Wind Film Festival St.Petersburg, Vilnius Film Festival, Uruguay International Film Festival, where it won ten awards, including awards for best film, actor, actress, screenplay, set design, etc. The film was also a Montenegrin Oscar candidate for 86thAcademy Awards. Ivan is a co-writer of HBO Adria show The Island, which is currently in development. He was a guest lecturer at FAMU Academy in Prague, FIOFA Institute in Ohrid, and held Master Class lectures atChapman University in California.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Some years ago, there was a wedding on my Montenegrin homeland peninsula that went horribly wrong. The bride decided right before the D-day, that she doesn’t want to do it. However, the peer pressure she found herself under was enormous. The people are invited, the gifts are bought, and for God sakes the food and the musicians are already paid in advance. What will people tell? So a deal was made that she will act the thing out and leave the next day. I couldn’t resist the idea that the as the wedding progressed, the information that everything is fake was slowly spreading. As a matter of fact the people who participated confirmed this to me. The story was simply too good not to spread around. Still, it didn’t stop them from consciously participating in this farce. They all played their parts. It made me think of – how many times do we consciously participate in something we don’t believe in? The idea that we do it all the time, haunted me. What also haunted me was her – the bride. Her wonderfully rebellious spirit, and her need to confront her deepest fears no matter the cost. In this situation, the costs are very interestingto explore. They are funny, they are ridiculous, they involve a whole lot of colorful characters, and they are tragic to their core. For my second feature “Forever hold your peace” feels like a type of traumatic comedy that I feel most comfortable with. The story is on the line of my biggest influences, Neorealism (that
goes well with my Mediterranean background), and my school – FAMU, or Czech cinematic tradition and early Forman works. The huma nity of the people, and the irrational aspect to them is very inspiring. But also, there is a strong tradition and conservatism that is worth dissecting and demystifying. Therefore this wedding story gives me the space to explore many themes that I find important. And without
throwing metaphors in the face of audience my wish is to stay subtle albeit politically relevant, while exploring the most difficult genre there is – comedy.

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