Screenings

Synopsis

This story centers around a phone call that was received one Friday in the spring of 1992. The main protagonist is an eleven year old girl. Being the only person at home, she is the one to answer the phone. The call arrives from another state delivering news of a death. It is this call that seemingly disintegrates the country and the girl’s entire reality. The war that will ravage the country has already started but the war is not the center of this story, only its backdrop. This call, which brought news of her grandfather’s death, remains as the most vivid memory in the girl’s mind decades later, as a constant presence. The film thus proceeds as a creative investigation into remembrance and the creation of personal and collective myths. The phone call as a recurring event in the story brings together a series of recollections which are assembled to build a larger story. Each memory is called forth by a phone call, and thus the film is divided into eleven events, eleven phone calls. Each event begins with a phone ringing and ends with the packing of suitcases and departure.

Director

Iva Radivojević

Biography

Iva Radivojević was born in Belgrade and spent her early years in Yugoslavia and Cyprus, eventually settling in New York City. She is an artist and filmmaker who currently divides her time between Athens and Lesbos. Her films have been screened internationally at festivals such as the Locarno Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. They have also been shown at MoMA in New York, and she has received commissions from ARTE La Lucarne and Field of Vision. She is the recipient of the Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the JeromeFellowship, the NYFA Fellowship and the Princess Grace Special Project Award. Her new art book, Avenue of the Living, was recently published by Big Black Mountain Press. She is a PhD candidate at Villa Arson in Nice.

Filmography

Selection: Evaporating Borders (2014, NIHRFF 2015), Notes from the Border (2015), Natto (2018), Utuqaq (2020),Aleph (2021), Quietly, I Walk the Wrong Way (2021), Togetherness (2022),When the Phone Rang (2024)

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