When The Phone Rang |  


by  Iva Radivojević


Serbia, 2025, 01:15:00

Writer, Director, Editor | Iva Radivojević
Producers | Andrijana Sofranić Šućur, Marija Stojnić, Madeleine Molyneaux, Iva Radivojević
Co-Producer | Genoveva Petrovits
Production Companies | Set Sail Films, Ivaasks Films, in association with Picture Palace Pictures
Cast | Natalija Ilinčić, Srna Vasić, Vasilije Zečević, Danica Maksimović, Anton Augustinov, Mila Drobnjak, Dunja Vladisavljević, Ivana Pančić, Ibro Sakić, Slavica Bajčeta
Director of Photography | Martin DiCicco
Camera assistant and loader | Bojan Đurišić
Gaffer | Viktor Minić
Music | Iva Radivojević
16mm Film Lab Processing | NFI
Sound Recordist | Bojan Palikuća
Sound Design & Mix | Leandros Ntounis @ I Heard Voices | Athens, Greece
Color | Dimitris Karteris - Athens, Greece
Mastering / DCP | Chris Karteris - Athens, Greece

With support from Film Center Serbia, Ministry of Culture of Serbia, Princess Grace Foundation, Chicken and Egg Pictures, Hungarian Film Incentive
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.