QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

Capturing the world in a kind of shunted motion, Everything That Will Happen Has Already Happened offers a snapshot of the modern human story as told through the lens of globalisation, capitalism, and migration. It is a chaotic yet stimulating journey. Filmed during and just after the Covid-19 pandemic and the various lockdowns and restricted travel conditions many of us faced, Nikolic utilizes scenes of sweeping drone footage and candid tracking shots over and through global urban vistas that at once envision the emptying of the world, the dying and the dead, and the sense of the still alive. The film features a series of short vignettes shot in Belgium, Beirut, and Venezuela that tell small human stories of confusion, loss, and love during this late stage of existence.

These short stories, directed and written by filmmakers of the respective countries, tell of the ambitions and hopes of others elsewhere in the world and show that there are many other stories to tell that are just as important and endearing then the fantasy superhero flicks, and epic blockbusters of modern cinema. We see an old actor (Didier Flamand) looking to reignite his film career after years out of the limelight, only to be informed that his on-screen expression of serious character acting has been abandoned by Hollywood, and independent film alike for celebrity cameos and muscular action stars. The times have changed, but he has not. We see a Venezuelan mother (Tatiana Mabo) who operates a street food stand to make ends meet while worrying about the whereabouts of her son who has left the country to make a better life for himself elsewhere.

Intermixed with these vignettes and the decaying urban montage is the story of a young woman named Alice (Agnes Artych), a PHD philosophy student who is working on her final dissertation in a plush New York apartment. The dissertation just so happens to be the film we are witnessing. She meets Jake (Henry Watkins) on the roof of her apartment building while attempting to adjust a wi-fi antenna. They share an instantaneous connection and spend time wandering the streets of New York City to observe the abandoned factories and buildings while engaging in a series of philosophical discussions that lead them down many paths of intrigue as they look upon the “last moments of a collapsing world.” Jake jokes that Alice’s Russian/Ukrainian background is a “product of globalization.” This is funny because the film feels like its own product of globalisation. Through the transnational creative act of collective filmmaking and storytelling the film was born.

While Alice and Jake’s story strings the film together, it is the weakest element. It is really the vignettes and the swooping cinematic montages of global moments that provide the most engaging, human, and beautiful moments within the film. If a message exists, it is that connection and commonality with one another in a form of global solidarity is vital as we transition to an unstable world where the mistakes of the past may just be beyond rectification next time around. The film offers a slice of many lives, and right now knowing how others live is the duty of film to communicate.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that as I sat to watch renowned Serbian filmmaker Vladan Nikolic latest project Everything That Will Happen Has Already Happened (2024) the citizens of the United States of America were heading out to the voting booths to elect their 47th President. The toss-up between former President Donald J. Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris offered little hope for a new path out of the last few decades of perpetual war, continued climate change, unfettered hypercapitalism, and financial boom and bust. Either way the vote goes (Trump won a second term), everything that will happen has already happened. The cycle repeats. First as tragedy, second as farce.

Everything That Will Happened Has Happened Already premieres in the Rebels with a Cause section of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.