12-08-2019

FNE at CineLink Sarajevo 2019: Pula, A Wartime Romance by Andrej Korovljev

By
    Director Andrej Korovljev Director Andrej Korovljev credit: Kinematograf

    SARAJEVO: Director Andrej Korovljev will be presenting his new project, the feature film Pula, a month after the world premiere of his long documentary Tusta at the Motovun Film Festival. The project will be presented at the CineLink Co-production Market, set to take place from 20 to 22 August 2019 in the framework of Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Industry Days.

    The film is set in wartime Pula, the coastal Croatian city that served as a safe haven for thousands of people displaced during the ex-Yugoslav war. The main character, Mahir, is a 28-year-old refugee from Bosnia, with unknown history, living in the Hotel Pula, turned into a refugee centre. While the others try to overcome war traumas by socialising, he is mostly alone, distracted. A spark of life comes when Una, a 16-year-old girl from Pula, is drawn to him.

    Pula is a love story. My balcony in Pula overlooks the ex-military barracks which were populated by people who lost everything they had. Mahir must have also slept in one of those rooms. Just below the Hotel Pula, we, the kids back then, were sunbathing and listening to punk music, while Mahir and people like him were looking for a minimum of dignity in a foreign environment. This is a story about them”, Andrej Korovljev told FNE.

    The director's life-long obsession with his hometown Pula is reflected in his previous documentaries Years of Rust (2000) and Tusta (2019), both produced by Factum.

    “Both Andrej and I grew up in Pula and we have very vivid memories of the city at that time. Our goal is to draw the project into the direction of the characterisation of the town”, producer Dijana Mlađenović told FNE.

    Dijana Mlađenović is producing through Kinematograf. The estimated production budget is 550,000 EUR, with 27,500 EUR already in place through the support of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre for script development, project development, and also the participation in the Re:Act programme. The shooting is set to start in the summer of 2020.

    The project will be looking for regional, Austrian or German coproducer or sales agents at CineLink.

    Production Information:

    Producer:
    Kinematograf (Croatia)
    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

    Credits:
    Director: Andrej Korovljev
    Writer: Ivan Turković-Krnjak