Silences and small gestures of connection hold great depths of understated meaning in Stefan Djordjevic’s quiet and meditative debut feature Wind, Talk to Me, which had its world premiere in the Tiger competition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
The Serbian director is in the frame and at the heart of this sensitive and tender but never sentimental or self-indulgent autobiographical portrait, as he tries to navigate the grief of his mother’s death, and enlists his family to help him finish the film that he started shooting about her when she was terminally ill. As the relatives gather at the lakeside house where she spent her last summer to work on an ending for the project as symbolic as it is literal, new possibilities for connection and renewal open up. This is a creative documentary that asks its audiences to attune themselves to small undercurrents and signals rather than flashy narrative action, and as such it may test the patience of more mainstream audiences, but should find numerous passionate fans among festival crowds.
The film’s title is derived from a conversation Stefan has with his mother in which, amid his gentle teasing about a hippy bent to her thinking, she claims that nature is reactive to human minds, and that if a person believes in the wind, it is possible to mentally summon it. He was able to shoot their intimate and philosophical conversations about the interconnectedness of things before she passed away, and excerpts are spliced in with the footage he filmed later. It is a moving exchange that lightly and implicitly touches on mortality and whether the universe is aware of our bodies — and how when we die we will be absorbed back into it, or remembered.
D. O. P. Marko Brdar captures the countryside environment with a sense of mysterious beauty, making the most of the dynamic qualities of light and shadow, as the palm of a pale hand is placed on the bark of a tree, or burning lanterns illuminate a cave. The most arcane and animism-tinged sequences of the film in melancholic, meditative shadows against birdsong or flame crackle are its most impactful. But these work so beautifully precisely because the easy-humoured and down-to-earth humility of the domestic scenes with their everyday rhythm offset their spiritual tone and allow us space to doubly feel their significance, whether it is the eightieth birthday gathering of Stefan’s grandmother where they sit around a table toasting with rakija, or the family’s sorting through and fixing up of the lakeside house.
Stefan’s continuation of his work on the film, which proceeds in a very meta fashion, allows for several beautiful compositions, merging the human protagonists with other aspects of nature. One of the most arresting is a surrealistic image of family members curled in the thick crooked branches of a tree, feigning sleep, like a vision from a dream.
Stefan has also been through a recent relationship break-up, in part precipitated by the demands of his mother’s deteriorating health. The key to healing his pained heart comes with a dog who he accidentally hits with his car on a country road, and wounds. Tracking down the hurt animal in the woods in a paroxysm of guilt, he takes her in as a pet. What follows is a touching dance of vulnerability and trust, as Lija, as she is known henceforth, is nursed in her recovery and unintentionally brings a new energy into the depleted family, challenging the sacred and stuck nature of mourning. Wind, Talk to Me is ultimately a sincere and profound portrait of life’s fragility, and nature’s endless and unpredictable powers of renewal.
Director, screenwriter: Stefan Djordjevic
Cast: Negrica Djordjevic, Stefan Djordjevic, Bosko Djordjevic, Djordje Davidovic, Budimir Jovanovic, Ljiljana Jovanovic, Marina Davidovic, Ana Petrovic, Vidak Davidovic, Lija
Producers: Dragana Jovovic, Stefan Ivancic, Stefan Djordjevic, Ognjen Glavonic, Vanja Jambrovic, Jozko Rutar, Miha Cernec
Cinematographer: Marko Brdar
Editing: Tomislav Stojanovic, Dragan von Petrovic
Sound Design: Julij Zornik
Music: Ivan Judas
Production Design: Dragana Bacovic
Production companies: Non-Aligned Films (Serbia), Katunga (Serbia), SPOK Films (Slovenia), RESTART (Croatia), Staragara Production (Slovenia)
Sales: Heretic
Venue: Rotterdam (Tiger Competition)
In Serbian
100 minutes