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Our dirty questions to Bruno Anković

Victoria Luxford interviews the director of Croatian war drama Celebration, which premiered at Karlovy Vary; they talk about his "cold" and surgical approach to filmmaking, remaining loyal to the original novel, shooting at night without lighting, desperate people doing bad things, and much more!

Croatian director Bruno Anković was born in the coastal town of Split in 1976, and studied Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, the nation’s capital. In the past 25 years, he directed various short films and documentaries, often for television. He also directs commercials. His debut feature Celebration premiered at the 58th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Set during WW2, this sleek and intelligent drama tells the story of a Croatian soldier grappling with his morals just as far-right extremism overtakes his country and much of Europe.

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Victoria Luxford – How did you become involved with the project?

Bruno Anković – I was lucky enough to read the novel by Damir Karakaš, on which the film is based, while it was still a manuscript, and I simply fell in love with it. I acquired the movie rights straight away, since I was particularly impressed not just by the main character Mijo and his family’s intimate story, but also by how a clear history representing the Balkan regions shines through, even if it is indirect and scarce with concrete events. This is a history of constant war, poverty, and a tragic hope that maybe things could somehow get better. However, this isn’t just the history of Eastern Europe, as the novel is very precise in detecting an ideological matrix, the variations of which we can see all around the world in various socio-political systems in the past, as well as in the present.

This is, indeed, a movie about how a young, impoverished and uneducated man can fall under the influence of far-right ideologies. This is why I thought it was very important to turn this story into film.

VL – What are the challenges of adapting a novel for the silver screen?

BA – My task, as a director, was to produce a screen version of a very demanding novel that is poetic, but also very static, with very little palpable plot. Of course, I was also trying to remain true to the novel’s message while preserving the style of the novel. Mijo, much like Dostoevsky’s characters, is at the same time the victim and the oppressor. But, as viewers, we only actually see his position as the antagonist toward the very end of the film. For these reasons, my goal throughout the film was to build a specific relationship with the main character: I wanted to keep a certain distance, observe him through a more forensic or anthropological lens, above all making sure not to cheat the audience through any directional procedures. At the same time, I wanted to explain to myself how it could be so easy to make the wrong choice due to fear and/or poverty and/or a lack of education and information, all with the aim of reaching some kind of promised utopia. This “cold” approach to directing seems to be the key aspect of observing the complexity of both this character and the novel itself.

VL – This is a part of history that may not be as familiar to international audiences. How did you approach conveying the context of the film in a way that was accessible to people everywhere?

BA – My first objective when making the film was to put the book into a cinematic form. This took so much of my energy that I actually did not have much time to think about how to present historical events to foreign audiences that are not quite familiar with them. In a way, I trusted the book and the way it presented its content to be universally understandable. The reactions to the film suggest that this strategy worked. In any case, I did not want to be didactic. What probably also helped our audience understand that the situation the film depicts is the present rise of extremism in many countries. This helped to show that the problem we are dealing with in the film is not tied to a specific and already historical situation.

VL – How did you approach the casting of Mijo? Was it hard to find three actors who could feel like the same person in different stages of life?

BA – The casting process itself was rather complex and lengthy – this is precisely due to having to find three people who play the same person in different stages of life. On the one hand, we looked for the professional actor in all ex-Yugoslav states since we speak a similar language, while on the other hand, we looked for non-professional children actors in Croatia only. We made a selection of young actors, so that once we decided that Bernard Tomić would play the adult Mijo, we could go back to the list of potential child actors and look for those that reflect his physical characteristics, and maybe even more importantly, his “energy”. I’d say that it was altogether a very complex puzzle.

VL – Much of the film is set in woodland and countryside. Were there obstacles to making a film in this setting?

BA – The majority of the film plays out in the woods, mountains and a village “on the edge of the world,” and we really did shoot the whole thing in a very remote area in Croatia, at the foot of the Velebit mountain. It is a very difficult terrain to shoot in. To use Polish writer Adam Mickiewicz’s words, this is a place: “…where the dogs ought to have had boots, it was all so covered with flints and sharp stones.” It is because of these conditions that we decided to go with a smaller, more flexible crew, who could withstand the exceptionally difficult shooting environment. For example, during the autumn shooting period, it rained incessantly, during winter we had to shoot when it was -17 °C outside, and in the summer in 40 °C weather.

VL – How did you achieve the film’s documentary-like aesthetic?

BA – We shot using vintage lenses from the ’70s. The handheld camera was constantly following the actors. We only used artificial lighting when it was technically not possible to do it any other way, and some 90 % of the film was done in natural lighting. We even shot the night scenes without lighting, practically in the dark – in the last lingering moments of the blue hour. We meticulously made sure that the set and costumes were historically authentic, even documentary. But I also think that the sound is significant for the impression viewers get, as is the way the actors portray their roles. All in all, the Director of Photography Aleksandar Pavlović and I called this approach “controlled documentarism”.

VL – The story conveys a lot through how the characters carry themselves, almost as much as it does the dialog. Did you have much time to rehearse with your cast?

BA – We did not have the typical rehearsals, I simply don’t believe in that kind of approach to working with actors. We spent a lot of time in these villages “at the edge of the world,” which are still incredibly remote today and where people live the way they did a century ago. The actors spent weeks there prior to the shoot, tilling the earth and milking cows. Bernard Tomić lost some 15 kilos for the part of the film that happens after the war, when Mijo must hide in the forest to save his life. He let his beard, hair and nails grow out for months. He even did not shower in the final stages of the preparations, or during the shoot (laughing). We also put a lot of effort into the specific language and dialect they use in the film…

VL – While the film deals with the past, are there lessons we can learn from it in the present?

BA – The main lesson for us, for people who live 80 years after the events depicted in the book and film, is probably that desperate people tend to do things that are bad for other humans. This should help us understand that we must do everything we can to help create a society in which people would not live in conditions of extreme cruelty. Extreme living conditions breed extremism. There are also other factors, of course, but we have focused on this one in the film. Maybe this is why people come up to me after screenings and tell me that they see some parallels in how extremism comes about today. We should learn that we are all parts of the same human ecosystem. If something goes wrong in it, we all feel the consequences.

VL – How have audiences reacted to the film so far? Were there any reactions that surprised you?

BA – The audience usually has a very emotional reaction. Some have approached us having just seen the film, still shaken by it, disclosing their family stories to us, regardless of the country or culture they were in at that time. The film seems to be universal. Maybe the most interesting situation was when a French news reporter approached us at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, showing us a video of young people celebrating Marine Le Pen’s victory, with the following conclusion: “These are the protagonists – and antagonists – of your film today.”

In Croatia, we’ve been targeted by both the extreme right and the extreme left media, but this did not surprise us all that much.

VL – Finally, are there any projects you have coming up?

BA = We’ve started working on a new film, currently we are in the scriptwriting and funding phase, but sadly that is quite a long process in Eastern Europe. Here I’d like to quote great Michael Haneke who, in around the 100th interview of one of his movie promotion tours, said something along these lines: “I’d have to shut myself up for that and write something!”. Or, in other words, I have to stop talking about Celebration, and start working on my new film.

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Bruno Anković is pictured at the top of this interview, snapped by Michelle Pullman Photography. The other image is a still of Cdelebration.


By Victoria Luxford - 16-01-2025

London-born Victoria Luxford has been a film critic and broadcaster since 2007, writing about cinema all over the world. Beginning with regional magazines and entertainment websites, she soon built up...

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