“The wind got up in the night and took our plans away,” reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavia. It was supposed to “safeguard the truth” about the Yugoslav people. But the plan never got beyond the construction of the basement.
The derelict building now tells a very different story from the one envisioned by the initiators 60 years ago. In the damp, pitch-dark building live the outcasts of a society reshaped by capitalism. The film focuses on a girl who earns a little cash on the street by cleaning car windows with her mother. The girl has a close friendship with an old woman who also lives in the basement. Against the background of a transforming city, the three women find refuge in each other.
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
World Premiere: IDFA – Luminous 2021
2021 Human Rights Film Festival Zagreb (Croatian Premiere)
2021 Trieste Film Festival (Italian Premiere)
2022 Crossing Europe Film Festival
2022 Hot Docs (Canadian Premiere)
2022 Jean Rouch Film Festival (French Premiere)
2022 Beldocs
2022 FICG, Guadalajara
2022 Sarajevo FF
2022 Manaki Brothers International Cinematographers’ Film Festival
2022 Liburnia FF
2022 AJB DOC Film Festival
2022 Sofia Documental
2022 Mediterranean Film Festival Široki Brijeg
2022 MIRAGE Art of the Real Festival
2022 Ji.hlava IDFF (Czech Premiere)
2022 Windsor IFF
2022 Escales Documentaires La Rochelle
2023 Big Sky DFF (US Premiere)
2023 Martovski festival – Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival
2023 SF DocFest
2023 Underhill Festival
And more: DCTV New York
AWARDS
- Best Cinematography at Beldocs 2022
“Rays of light that pierce through the darkness and damp of a ideological project never completed. Dappled sunshine at busy traffic junctions, in park clearings littered with trash and on faces still full of hope. Hues that tend towards the otherworldly in capturing what is painfully real.”
- Heart of Sarajevo for The Best Feature Documentary at Sarajevo Film Festival 2022
“We want to award this film for its wonderful creative work on many levels: directing, camerawork, sound, editing, dramaturgy. The filmmaker is a master in showing and not telling. We as the jury valued that very highly. All of these ingredients made us witness the world of a strong little girl, living in a fragile environment, navigating through life. The unconditional love portrayed in the film against all odds makes us question and wonder what is right and what is wrong, and who we are to judge.”
- Best Feature Award at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2023
“The jury presents Best Feature Award to MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION, an incredibly intimate, patient and formally ambitious observational documentary unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
- Best Feature Documentary Award at Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival 2023
“This is a dark film that is at once filled with light, thanks to the enormous warmth and depth of its protagonists.”
- The “Maslačak” Award for Best Film in the regional selection at Underhill Festival 2023
PRESS
Reviews: New York Times (ENG), Unseen Films, This Week in New York, Boing Boing (ENG), Kino Zeit (DE), Tilt Magazine (EN), The Extra Mile (EN), Screenfish (EN), Ubiquarian (EN), Cineuropa (EN), Business Doc Europe (EN), Universal Cinema (EN), Cineuropa – Trailer Release (EN), Film New Europe (EN), Variety (EN), Filmkommentaren.dk (EN)
Interviews: Filmmaker Magazine (ENG), Kosovo 2.0 (EN), Courrier des Balkans (FR), Point of View Magazine (EN), Cineuropa (EN), Fred FM (EN)
***
“Monumental in its tender exploration of hope lost and found“
Kirsten Johnson
“A delicate, beautifully composed and intense film“
Helena Třeštíková
“As unconventional as the architect wanted the museum to be“
Tue Steen Müller
“Resonant with the works of Jana Ševčíková and Wang Bing… an overlooked mirror of contemporary Serbia“
JP Sniadecki
“Stylistically dreamlike and emotionally intimate… (Keča’s) film favours emotions over information, empathy over drama.“
Kees Driessen, Business Doc Europe
“The film drifts in and out of the reportage approach, alternating with a more dreamlike state. Where image and sound get disconnected, and where shallow focus, slowly drifting takes, intimate close-ups, moody soundscapes and the absence of any voice-over help us to let go of our ‘news stance’ as spectators and instead engage emotionally with mother and daughter.“
“strong and striking, sometimes even approaching the standards of the American independent (fiction) cinema, but it feels authentic enough to make Museum of the Revolution one of the best documentary works of the last year in the Balkans”
Marko Stojiljković, Ubiquarian
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Srđan Keča
Srđan Keča’s work has centered around sites of memory, often in relation to conflict and displacement. His films A Letter to Dad, Mirage, and Escape have screened at leading documentary festivals including IDFA, DOK Leipzig, and Full Frame, and his video installations have been exhibited at venues such as the Venice Biennale of Architecture and the Whitechapel Gallery. Flotel Europa, which he produced and edited, premiered at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival, winning the Tagesspiegel Jury Award. He studied at Ateliers Varan and the NFTS, and is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University.
Filmography
FLOTEL EUROPA (71′, 2015)
MIRAGE (42′, 2011)
A LETTER TO DAD (48′, 2011)
ESCAPE (23′, 2013)
THE FIRST STEP (7′, 2013)
CREDITS
Director Srđan Keča
Cinematography Srđan Keča
Editing Hrvoslava Brkušić, Srđan Keča
Sound Radiša Cvetković
Sound Design Jakov Munižaba
Music Hrvoje Nikšić
Screenplay Srđan Keča
Production Vanja Jambrović for Restart, Srđan Keča for UZROK
Co-production Lukáš Kokeš for Nutprodukce
SUPPORTED BY
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia
Film Center Serbia
Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program
Just Films/Ford Foundation
Open Society Foundations
European Union’s Creative MEDIA program
Croatian Radiotelevision
Croatian Audiovisual Center
Czech Film Fund
Geo Television.
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Vanja Jambrović
Vanja Jambrović is a producer whose track record includes more than 20 films of all shapes and sizes. Her films have circled the globe, having been screened in competition at Hot Docs, Toronto IFF, Visions du Réel, FID Marseille, Karlovy Vary IFF, Sarajevo FF and hundreds more. Her latest production, documentary film “Srbenka” directed by Nebojša Slijepčević has been awarded with Doc Alliance Award and shortlisted for the EFA Award 2018. Vanja is also a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee, for the feature documentary project “Museum of the Revolution” directed by Srđan Keča (2021).
Srđan Keča
Director, Scriptwriter, Co-producer
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Restart is an organization focused on production, education, distribution and exhibition of creative documentary films. Restart was founded in 2007. Our films were screened at more than 350 international film festivals such as: Locarno Festival, IDFA, Hot Docs, Karlovy Vary IFF, International Film Festival Rotterdam, FID Marseille, Zurich Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Mar del Plata, Jihlava IDFF and others …
Restart runs several film projects – documentary and fiction film production, distribution of documentary films, a documentary cinema and an educational program in documentary film.
Restart
Croatia
vanja@restarted.hr
+385(0) 91 89 30 675
http://restarted.hr
UZROK was founded by a group of filmmakers, artists and software developers in Belgrade, Serbia. The studio works across various media: film, installation, photography, games and web. UZROK’s film productions include the found-footage film Flotel Europa, winner of the Tagesspiegel Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015; experimental documentary Mirage, Best Central and Eastern European Documentary at Jihlava IDFF 2012, and the essay film A Letter to Dad, Best Balkan Documentary at Dokufest 2011.
UZROK
Serbia
info@uzrok.com
+381 638 946 346
http://uzrok.com/
CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY
Nutprodukce
Czech Republic
info@nutprodukce.cz
https://www.nutprodukce.cz
