An analogue, ice-green clock, the arms on its face indicating 10:36, hangs on the wall at a slightly crooked angle in When the Phone Rang, and as the narrator circles back to this image over and over, it is as if we are stuck in this moment in time, on a Friday morning in 1992.
This film of memory retrieval, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and screens in the In Focus programme at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is the third feature of Serbian director Iva Radivojevic, who has previously dealt with themes of displacement, migration, and connections that cross space and time in her essayistic and conceptual features Evaporating Borders (2014) and Aleph (2021). Personal yet stark and distanced, When the Phone Rang is based closely on her own experiences of a childhood disrupted by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. It revisits “a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” as it’s termed by the narrator (childhood acquaintance Slavica Bajceta), who refers to the eleven-year-old protagonist in the third person, as she tries to make narrative order of an early life that was fragmented by war and societal collapse. There is a sense of emotional repression to this painful history, which is stylishly framed and narrated with cool detachment, but it quietly works its way under the skin.
The phone call that comes at the time on the clock informs Lana (Natalija Ilincic) that her grandfather has died, and entrusts her with passing this on to others in the family. The news, crucially, coincides with the start of war in the region, and the two become inextricably linked in the youngster’s mind, as the family are pushed to flee with hastily packed suitcases. They speed toward the border by car as the airports have already been closed, and reach the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, a city that seems grey and uninviting amid a torrential downpour. The phone call is the last memory that Lana is able to recall in detail when she is older.
The chunky, cordless phone that Lana takes the call on is one of many items of ‘90s production design that, framed close-in, take us back to the period in question. So too does a carefully selected soundtrack (adding ironic melodrama, a rousing operatic number from a production of Carmen was also blaring out that morning from the television set.) Bulky analogue technology, VHS tapes and music cassettes are a recurrent motif, reminding us that culture and information were shared differently then; it is also in these stored traces that triggers to restore a sense of the immediacy of lost place can be found. Archival photographs of the grandfather, a retired, high-ranking colonel, are spliced into the re-enactment, adding further texture of the past.
Lana’s parents exist largely outside the frame. Instead, the camera hones in on Lana’s face, pensive in thought and alone with her confusion, an underlying melancholy to the detached recollection of events. As we loop back over and over to this ‘90s world, other memories and people surface. Vlada (Vasilije Zecevic), with his shaven head, brown leather jacket and anarchist leanings, is one such vivid character. Older than Lana, but a friend who she bonds with over music, he lives in a neighbouring apartment and hangs around outside the building sniffing glue. She later hears he died of a heroin overdose. He is a haunting presence, one of many citizens silently self-medicating against the alienation intrinsic to a dysfunctional society, as an unsettling sense of tension gathers. Product shortages and the desperation of scarcity hit. Lana’s parents begin to carry weapons amid spiralling crime, and the intimidating activities of The One Who Barks, the head of the local extortion ring. It is a tough moment of the ‘90s that may offer little compelling reason to return — except that it holds the key to a full sense of home and identity.
Director, screenwriter, editor, music, art director: Iva Radivojevic
Cast: Natalija Ilincic, Anton Augustinov
Voice: Slavica Bajceta
Producers: Andrijana Sofranic Sucur, Marija Stojnic, Iva Radivojevic, Madeleine Molyneaux
Cinematographer: Martin DiCicco
Sound: Bojan Palikuca
Production companies: Set Sail Films (Serbia), Ivaasks Films (USA)
Sales: Lights On
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (In Focus)
In Serbian, English
73 minutes
