Director Miroslav Terzić won the Best Direction award at the KineNova International Film Festival in Skopje for the film 3 Weeks After. The jury, in explaining the award, emphasized the director’s precise building of tension, sure guidance of the actors and convincing portrayal of peer violence and its consequences.
This recognition continues the series of festival successes of the film. 3 Weeks After had its world premiere in the main selection of the 60th International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, where it won the Europa Cinemas Label award for best European film. At the 73rd Pula Film Festival, the film was awarded three Golden Arenas – for direction, screenplay and editing, and it received the Golden Mimosa for best screenplay at the Film Festival in Herceg Novi.
Thanking the jury and the organizers of the festival at the recognition, Terzić pointed out that he does not make films for the sake of awards, but to encourage conversations.
“I believe that this is a film that can start a serious conversation between children and adults and encourage us to find a systemic solution to this accident that is destroying our lives little by little. Life can be much more beautiful if the language of violence is not the basic language of our lives,” said Terzić. He wished the festival to be brave, new and different in the future and to choose films that provoke and encourage us to be better.
The film follows a group of high school students who, three weeks after the tragic loss of a school friend, go on a previously planned excursion. During the trip, questions of responsibility, silence, peer violence and collective guilt are raised. Inspired by real events, the film is about a society trying to understand the consequences of a tragedy it failed to prevent.
The main roles are played by Jovan Ginić, Anđela Alavirević, Klara Karaulić and Andrija Marković, along with Tihana Lazović Trifunović and Branislav Trifunović.
The film was produced by the Belgrade production company This and That Productions, and was realized with the support of Film Center Serbia, the Cineworld Fund of Luxembourg, the National Film Center of Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture of Italy, the Croatian Audiovisual Center and the Creative Europe MEDIA program.
Photo: This and That Productions