\n<\/p>\n
\n\tFollowing the success of TV series \u201cOperation Sabre,\u201d which premiered in Canneseries to acclaim last year and went on to win audiences across Europe, one of its creators is making another dream come true: Vladimir Tagi\u0107 is set to premiere his feature film debut \u201cYugo Florida\u201d in competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe film follows Zoran (Andrija Kuzmanovic), a night-shift worker whose life revolves mostly around his job as a reality TV show editor guarding participants as they sleep, and the morose minutiae of sharing a shabby flat with an equally shabby middle-aged man who teaches English to Chinese students online. Things take an unexpected turn when Zoran\u2019s emotionally unavailable dad is diagnosed with a terminal illness, with his son taking over his care. The cast also includes Nikola Pejakovic, Hana Selimovic, Snjezana Sinovcic Siskov, and Jana Milosavljevic.<\/p>\n
\n\tSpeaking with Variety <\/em>ahead of Sarajevo, Tagi\u0107 says he started working on the film before \u201cOperation Sabre,\u201d over seven years ago. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to finance TV shows than it is to finance a film, especially when you are working on a personal story that is not necessarily commercially interesting for a wider audience,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe needed a few years to find co-production funds for the film.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAsked what he thinks of the growing popularity of not only television in Europe generally but Eastern European TV shows, the director says there are two ways of looking at the current situation: \u201cThe first one is that TV shows are taking over and becoming more interesting for a wider audience, and movies are in trouble. Another way to look at it is to understand that movies were losing audiences even before TV series began to rise, as the idea of going to the cinema somehow stopped being relevant for people. The gap between festival films and Hollywood superhero films became wider, and that gap is now filled with TV.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tStill, even though he has built his career on television, Tagi\u0107 believes film is \u201cthe most challenging and exciting form of expression.\u201d \u201cMaking a movie is a dream come true,\u201d he gushes. \u201cI feel movies should exist, have to exist, and are still the most important art form in my life and, I believe, the life of many others.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\u201cYugo Florida\u201d (Courtesy of Sarajevo Film Festival)<\/span><\/p>\n \n\tWhen it comes to \u201cYugo Florida,\u201d Tagi\u0107 says he first envisioned the film as a road movie, with two people stuck in the titular car having to iron out the complications of their relationship. Eventually, the film evolved from that format, with the director focusing on a portrayal of modern loneliness. \u201cI wanted to make a movie that was more than just about the relationship between father and son. For me, this is a movie about loneliness, and if you want to approach that subject, you have to look at more than one aspect of your character\u2019s life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tA key aspect in this sense was the insertion of Zoran\u2019s job as a reality TV show editor, a job Tagi\u0107 himself had over a decade ago. \u201cI know so many people in Serbia who are working strange jobs,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can have an American woman in Minnesota call the support line for an ATM and be speaking with my friend in Belgrade. My first idea was to have my character work that job, and then I remembered when I worked as a chief editor on \u2018Big Brother.\u2019 It was the most interesting job I\u2019ve ever had, and one of those things when you\u2019re searching for somebody else\u2019s story, but I could tell my story instead. And then everything clicked.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOnce the structure of the film was finally in place, Tagi\u0107\u2019s main challenge was casting. The director points out how Zoran is a \u201cdifficult character\u201d to play. \u201cHe is a passive character; his problems are interior, and it is difficult not only to understand but to identify with these kinds of characters. I feared that audiences would find him boring and too melancholic, but I wrote the character, so I have to defend him.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe director\u2019s solution was to cast an actor who was the very opposite, reaching out to Kuzmanovic thanks to his immense popularity as a comedic actor in Serbia. \u201cAt first, he was confused,\u201d Tagi\u0107 recalls. \u201cBut even when I told him I wanted him to shave his head and lose some weight, he still wanted to do it. He was committed and had the most amazing transformation. He is unrecognizable, and I applaud him for that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs for how he is feeling ahead of the world premiere of his debut, Tagi\u0107 says he is \u201ca little scared\u201d but \u201cat peace.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOf course, you get nervous,\u201d he points out. \u201cYou doubt yourself and start questioning your decisions, but at the end of all these questions and fears, there is only one thing, and that is my firm belief that I\u2019ve made a truthful film. That is the most important thing to me. I didn\u2019t make any compromises, I didn\u2019t sugarcoat anything, I didn\u2019t try to win audiences\u2026 I did as I felt I should, and I shall live with everything that comes with that decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYugo Florida\u201d is produced by Marija Stojanovic for Serbia\u2019s Sense Production, in co-production with Bulgaria\u2019s Contrast Films, France\u2019s La Belle Affaire, Croatia\u2019s Eclectica, and Montenegro\u2019s Adriatic Western. The film was supported by Film Center Serbia, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), and the Bulgarian National Film Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following the success of TV series \u201cOperation Sabre,\u201d which premiered in Canneseries to acclaim last year and went on to win audiences across Europe, one of its creators is making another dream come true: Vladimir Tagi\u0107 is set to premiere his feature film debut \u201cYugo Florida\u201d in competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival.\u00a0 The film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3269,1245,3649,6185,9449,9451,1456,9450,9452],"class_list":{"0":"post-15990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-debut","9":"tag-feature","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-operation","12":"tag-sabres","13":"tag-tagic","14":"tag-talks","15":"tag-vladimir","16":"tag-yugo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}