Nina Ognjanović’s film Where the Road Leads won the student jury award at the 7th Riviera International Film Festival in Sestri Levante, Italy. The young author’s achievement was in competition with ten selected feature films from around the world.
The Riviera Film Festival is a young, exclusive festival where films by authors under the age of 35 are screened by invitation only. .
Nina Ognjanović, the author of the film, said “This is a graduation film made by students, and I am particularly happy that we have just received an award from the student jury. We are glad to have shown the film to the Italian audience at the Riviera Film Festival and thank them for the great opportunity they are giving to young directors”.
The prestigious festival in Italy is becoming more and more important for filmmakers. In previous years, the jury has included Oscar-winning actor Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea), Oscar-winning producer Miles Dale (The Shape of Water), Oscar-winning screenwriter David Franzoni for Gladiator, Oscar-winning director Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) and many others.
The film is set in a remote, forgotten village near which a highway will soon be built. In addition to the highway, a stranger also arrives in the village. The locals, full of mistrust and fear of the change that the road brings, suspect that the stranger has something to do with it and is hiding his true intentions. A few misunderstandings and lies are enough for the townspeople’s intolerance towards the stranger to turn into an open conflict, and Jana, a girl from the village who fell in love with the stranger, realizes that she is the only one who can save him from the danger that has loomed over him. The cast includes Jana Bjelica, Zlatan Vidović, Vladimir Maksimović, Ninoslav Ćulum, Svetozar Cvetković, Branislava Stefanović, Igor Filipović, Pavle Čemerikić, Marta Bogosavljević, Eva Ras and Demijan Kostić.
The film was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia and Film Center Serbia. The producer of the film is Pointless Films, while the co-producers are the Faculty of Dramatic Arts and Radio Television of Serbia.
As of May 24, the film continues its world tour with a return to America at the Mammoth Lakes Festival in California. Serbian audience will have the opportunity to see the film in cinemas in the fall of this year.