Bucharest, 23rd of June 2011 – Transilvania Film is releasing in cinemas all over Romania a multi award-winning movie, a powerfull story about frienship, adolescence, love, and growing up. The movie will be screened in the firts week of release in Bucharest at Hollywood Multiplex – Bucharest Mall and in Cluj, at Cinema Victoria.
Sinopsis
Bor, Serbia, was once the largest copper mine in Europe, now it is just the biggest hole. Best friends, Toda and Stefan spend their first summer after high school skating in the abandoned mine and making ”Jackass-like” videos. When Dunja, a friend who has returned from France for her summer holidays, arrives on the scene, the boys vie for her attention in ways that tear at the fabric of their relationship. Straining their friendship further, Stefan will be going to University in Belgrade in the fall while Toda professes he wouldn’t go to University, even if he had the money. In the meantime, Union protests in town, which started small, gain momentum and the boys are thrust back together under a common cause.
The Director’s Statement
I was lucky to get my hands on a copy of home made, one hour long “jackass-like” film which was made by these guys themselves. I was impressed by a huge amount of unarticulated energy which erupted from them, and also by a complete lack of interest in actual social struggle going on around them. I remembered my own attitude from 10 years earlier, when I also lived in that same small town, and realized that it wasn’t much different from theirs – it was all about FUN. I remembered how everything was much simpler, social rights, health insurance, politics… those were all terms from some other, borring dimension. So I wanted TILVA ROŠ to be about that – waking the counscience you don’t want to wake, finding out about injustices you don’t care about, assuming social roles when you don’t want to participate, and about helpless strugle to save that carefree teenage world from any changes. That’s why I decided to make a feature film with them playing themselves. We started hanging out together and during that period I wrote a script based on the clips I saw in their film, stories they told me about and my own memories from my teenage years. And that’s TILVA ROŠ, it’s real, but not really.
Visual Style and Influence
Since I was born and raised in Bor, I had this mixed feeling towards the place, because Bor is in Serbia a symbol of a destroyed industry. It is partly fair to say so, but I never pictured it in my head like some East European post-industrial wasteland. I never felt as I lived in some ugly sinkhole ghost town, on contrairy, I always felt as it was the most beautiful place on earth. And because of the mine tailings that surround the town it always reminded me of Arizona desert. It’s not new to search for the beauty where people usually don’t look for it, so I had a very clear refference in the legendary american photographer William Eggleston‘s work. His photos of US Midwest wastelands look as the most beautiful memory a person could have. While looking at them I had the exact same feeling as when watching some landscape back home. Films like Gummo, My own private Idaho, Thumbsucker were all kind of visual and emotional refferences of what kind of feeling I wanted to make.
Nikola Ležaić’s bio
Nikola Ležaić is born on 6th of august 1981. in Bor, Serbia where he finished high school. He studied film directing at the Faculty of dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Before that he was a co-founder of a comic group named SMOG, and a co-founder of the first literary movement of the XXI century named METASYNCHRISM. Tilva Rosh is his feature debut.
Cast
Marko Todorović – Toda și Stefan Đorđević are real people, also their friends from Kolos Skate Team. For the director this was the whole ideea – as for them to play real characters. Their lifes are different drom the ones in the movie, but the characters are strongly inspired from the real life.
Dunjei Character, played by Dunja Kovačević – fine arts student in Novi Sad is the single part that was invented. This part was added a week before the shootings. The only professional actors were the ones playing the parts of Toda and Stefan’s parents, and the karaoke host.
Title: Tilva Ros
The title Tilva Roš is actually the name of the area around Bor where the first geological explorations of copper ore were done in the late 19th century. In Vlachian it means The Red Hill. The hill looked red because if was full of copper ore. This is mentioned in the first scene of the film.
Awards
- FIPRESCI Award, 2011 – Transilvania International Film Festival, Romania
- Best Movie, Best Actor – Marko Todorovic – Sarajevo International Film Festival, Bosnia&Herzegovina
- Best Movie, Best Story – 2 in 1 Film Festival Moscow, Russia
- Best Movie – Noordelijk Film Festival, The Netherlands
- Spirit Award – Film Festival Cottbus, Germany
- Best Movie, Cineuropa Prise – Estoril Film Festival, Portugal
- Special Jury Award – Gijon International Film Festival, Spain
- Best Movie, The Audience Award – Festival International du Film de Belfort, France