As children, Leni and Lazar were best friends. When Lazar returns from extensive travels abroad for his father’s funeral, Leni yearns to reconnect with her childhood soul mate but still feels the sting of their years of estrangement. Nevertheless, hoping to escape the doldrums of adult life, she embarks with Lazar on an impromptu bicycle trip across a gorgeous, sunbaked countryside. As they revel in raucous bouts of disobedience, Leni must decide if their shared language of misbehavior is a bond upon which she can build a life.

The Disobedient perfectly captures the rush of youthful rebellion and the euphoria of finding a kindred spirit, but uses its vivid portrait of that bliss to facilitate a clever and creative exploration of the stumbling blocks one encounters while growing up.

LOG LINETwo childhood soul mates reconnect years later and embark on an impromptu bicycle trip, hoping to escape the doldrums of adult life.

SYNOPSIS

ABOUT THE FILM

Producing The Disobedient was a tempting and hazardous experience based on a will to dare and see outside the frame of standardized production schemes. The main drive was fueled by eagerness to go that extra mile and learn how to communicate with the crew on a more instinctive and telepathic level, not just from a professional point of view but more as if all of us belonged to the same nomadic tribe. We invested all we had at that moment, relying on the play of circumstance. Rather than opposing it, we harnessed the power of contingency, ready to accept it and deploy it as a means of production for the film. (“Readiness is all”.)

We created life around the film aiming to faithfully document that life without interfering with the way it unfolded.

Any insistent struggle for beauty and truth gives rise to turbulence and friction. That struggle may well be supported by nature but contested by society. The core idea of our creative production was the notion that spiritual categories are equally rewarding as material ones. By actively incorporating the spiritual categories into the production algorithm, we were able to increase the production value of existing (and rather limited) budget and maximize production output.

Once the priorities were clearly established, the team clustered into groups reflecting those priorities rather than some arbitrarily preset criterion of traditional division of labor in film crew that usually tends to retard the production dynamics. For this to work, all team members had to be receptive and respond instinctively and productively to a momentary change in circumstance.

Road movie was a road not only for the main characters but also for each creative member of the crew. Self-exploration and wanderings had to approach the limit in order to discover the truth, about oneself and others, a process which was at times callous but always exciting: life needs to be provoked in order to be discovered.

The Disobedient was supported by The Ministry of Culture of Republic of Serbia and was filmed for 7 weeks in the summer of 2012. Post-production was financed by the Film Centre of Serbia. Serbian with English subtitles, 2014, 112 minutes, colorAspect ratio: 2:35, Delivery format: DCP, Shooting format: ARRI ALEXASound: Dolby Digital 5.1

This film does not search for goals but incites journeying, into self, out of self or beyond self. The Disobedient is an intuitive and delicate exploration of an inexhaustible urge to be fully alive and keep the restless and rebellious spirit.

Leni and Lazar are escaping social obstacles that are offering nothing but delusional tucking into what is predictable and imposed. The two of them are riding on the edge of impossible, but daring to embrace randomness and playfulness of such a path in order to keep up the sparks of meaningful and intense experiences. The drive for such actions and the concomitant electricity arise naturally through simple interaction between them. Their late growing up is inseparable from their early growing together.

The Disobedient is imagined as a road movie, but real movement is taking place during their attempts to reinvent childhood by running away from reality that started to make its irreversible moves. This is a story about escaping from escaping, about search for some new reality, far from expectations of others and far from social restrictions. This story tries to question boundaries between objective reality and the game, between personal and public, between real and surreal.

This is mostly a character-driven plot, situations are provoked by the acts of the main characters. The opening of the film reveals slowness of provincial lifestyle and redundancy of everyday events. Story takes place in the Vojvodina plain which is characterized by boredom and slowness that causes inexhaustible longing for something that may be happening somewhere in the distance. It is a slightly Chekhovian element that implies specific state of mind of those who live in such surroundings. Nevertheless, Lazar’s arrival tempts Leni’s dormant hunger for damaging playfulness.

DIRECTORS STATEMENT

One of my most intense childhood memories is one of a little lonely house in the distance placed in an unending scenery of the Vojvodina plain, somewhere in the outskirts of my hometown. For many years I was planning to take a long walk to that house and see how it looks when you get closer and who actually lives there. A couple of years ago I finally dared to do so and once I got closer I realized that all that is left standing of the house is that one wall I used to see as a child. That was the encounter with my dissolving and collapsed longing.

The Disobedient is a road movie through deconstructed childhood memories. Those memories are either to be reinvented or left alone to be blown away by whirls of the upcoming. Mina Djukic

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

DJORDE ARAMBASIC (Cinematographer)Djorde Arambašić won his first prize at the age of 23 at the Expo of youth photography in Yugoslavia. In 1998 he won first prize for his collection of photos in “Šumice” In 1999/2000 he won second prize for collection of photos at Vojvodina Photoexpo in Novi Sad. In 2001 he enrolled in the Faculty of Drama Art in Belgrade, Film and TV camera department. His work was featured in the book Antology of Vojvodina Photography (“People With Three Eyes by Borisav Mirosavljević

His work on the feature film “Run Rabbit, Run”, won first prize in Cinefondacion competition programme in Cannes Film Festival. He won third reward from Cinefondacion competition programme in Cannes Film Festival for the film “Minus”.

The Video installation “Cadences” in which he worked with painter Bojan Bem was awarded as expo of the year (Politika Art Prize). As Director of Photography he shot more than twenty short fiction films, around 80 music videos, several documentary and corporate films, several short TV serials and not as many commercial videos. He is currently in production on “Panama” (feature debut of Pavle Vučković).

NIKOLA BERČEK (Production Designer)Nikola Berček, born in Belgrade in 1976, has been working as a production de-signer and an art director since 1998. Known for various movies, such as drama “Buđenje iz mrtvih / Awakening from the Dead”, popular Serbian movies “Civil Life”, “The Cordon”, “Ivkova slava”, or independant and critically acclaimed “Tilva Rosh”. He was also involved in making of a number of very popular TV films and television series, which ran on the public service broadcaster RTS.

IVAN VASIC (Editor)Born in 1976 in Belgrade, Serbia. Graduated from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Department of Film and TV Editing. Film editor on several prize-winning documentaries. Participated with the Serbian team of artists at the 55th Venice Biennale. Edited several TV shows and TV films while working at the Serbian Broadcasting Company (RTS). Crystal Prism awarded by the Serbian Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2013.

MINA DJUKIC (Director, Producer, Writer)Mina Đukić was born in Sombor, in 1982. In January 2008, together with her colleagues Nikola Ležaić and Uroš Tomić, she founded the film company Kiselo dete. They produced their first full-length film ‘Tilva Roš’, directed by Nikola Ležaić. She directed several short films awarded at national and international film festivals.

NIKOLA LEZAIC (Producer)Nikola Ležaić is a Serbian film director/screenwriter/film producer. Being very much into alternative culture since his teens, he used to draw comics with the local comic group called Smog. He co-founded the Metasynchrism. literary movement He graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He is mostly known for his first feature film “Tilva Roš” produced by Film House Kiselo Dete. It is praised as arguably the most internationally acclaimed Serbian film of the last decade and it earned Nikola an EFA Discovery Award Nomination in 2011. He is the owner of the production company Smog Entertainment formed as a sister company of Film House Kiselo Dete. He is currently producing the feature film “Pogledaj me, Kusturice” by Uroš Tomić as well as developing his second feature script.

HANA SELIMOVIC (“Leni”) Hana Selimovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, on 5 Feb 1987. She is a recipient of several prestigious international and regional theater awards, notably for her role in When Father Was Away on Business (2011). She also received acclaimed for her debutant role in White White World (2010). The Disobedient is her second feature film. Ms. Selimovic is a freelance artist also working as an assistant professor of drama at the Academy of Arts in Belgrade.

MLADEN SOVILJ (“Lazar”)Mladen Sovilj is a 26-year-old Serbian actor born in Pančevo. Two years ago, he graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. “The Disobedient” is his fifth feature film. He is currently working on his sixth called “Atomski s desna”. He is frequently acting in Belgrade theatres while being permanently employed by the Pančevo Cultural Center. He likes to solve Rubik’s Cube.

MINJA SUBOTA (“Minja Subota”)Minja Subota is a well-known Serbian composer, musician, entertainer and photographer. He is the host of the long-running children’s TV show Muzički tobogan on RTS.

IVAN DJORDJEVIC (“Jovan”)Ivan Djordjevic was born on January 17, 1974 in Krusevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia. He is best known for the films; I Already Am Everything I Want to Have (2010), Malo paznje, molim (2002) and Emigranti (2002).

THE CAST

PRESS CONTACT: Jim Dobson / 323-896-6006 / jim@indie-pr.com

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