When The Phone Rang
Iva Radivojević / Serbia & United States / 2024 / 73 min
Memories of ex-Yugoslavia meet autofiction in a critically acclaimed film about an 11-year-old girl who receives a series of mysterious phone calls that change her life.
A deeply original film built around a series of fateful phone calls. The first time the phone rings is in 1992. We are in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, where someone calls to tell 11-year-old Lana that her grandfather has died. For Lana, the sad news marks the first step towards collapse in a Yugoslavia on the brink of civil war.
But the series of calls continues, painting an increasingly complete picture of young Lana in Iva Radivojević’s unpredictable feature film that defines its own field between memory and autofiction. Lana befriends glue-sniffing punk Vlada and her easygoing neighbor Jova while uncovering her own family history.
Shot on analog 16mm film in Novi Sad on locations that still look like they did in the 90s, ‘When the Phone Rang’ dissolves the clear boundaries between past and present – much like Radivojević’s 11-year-old alter ego is in the transition between childhood and early adolescence.