On the cassettes that have been collecting dust for 18 years, a misterious film material is revealed. Woven with puzzling excerpts from the protagonist’s diary, it is slowly revealed that the vintage footage of alien landscapes, enigmatic characters and perilous circumstances, is shot by the first Serbian to climb Mount Everest. Reaching the very limits of human capabilities and entering a state of aimlessness and deep loss, the man eventually brings back haunted memories that range from the absurd to the mystic. His dream of adventure didn’t culminate in a victorious roar, reveals a quote from his journal, but ended in a scream of the defeated. In a journey to eternal glory, and back to the banality of everyday life, he changed in ways he never intended.
Awards
Visions du Réel International Film Festival – Special Mention, 2018
Beldocs International Documentary Film Festival – Best film in the Serbian Competition Programme, 2018
Mladen Kovačević graduated of fiction film directing in Belgrade, London, and Cape Town. In past several years Mladen Kovačević has wholeheartedly dedicated himself to documentaries. His films have been selected to hundreds of festivals including Visions du Réel, Hot Docs, DOK Leipzig, CPH:DOX, FIDMarseille, and so on, where he won numerous awards.
Selected Filmography
Wall of Death, and All That, 2016
Unplugged, 2013
Director: Mladen Kovačević
Screenplay: Mladen Kovačević
Cinematography: Dragan Jaćimović
Editing: Jelena Maksimović
Sound: Jakov Munižaba
Producer: Iva Plemić
Production: Horopter Film Production
Serbia, 2018, 63 min.