Sunday | 21. July. 2013

Larger cinematic bite

Director Goran Ribarić on the film The Mountain

The short film The Mountain developed from an exercise made for the completion of the third year of the directing programme at the Academy of Dramatic Art. As a refreshment in comparison with the second year, when the topic was assigned, this time the director was given a free hand , which made him embark on a more ambitious and challenging project.  Thus the larger cinematic bite, despite week production and financial budgets, included a trip to Split, where most of the scenes where shot on the top of the Kozjak Mountain, in fully guerrilla-like conditions. Luckily, neither violent gusts of north-eastern wind nor poor equipment (“we only had what we could carry with us”) messed up the director’s plan. In order to make up for less than perfect technical possibilities, he focused one hundred per cent on the story and acting, that is, on the relationship between the mother and the daughter, saturated with many forces of psychological, family and intimate nature, which, in that mountainous, uncomfortable and bare environment, as opposed to the everyday well-known ambience, eventually led to intriguing frictions, conversations and situations. The possibly expected selection of a father and a son as main protagonists in a film was deliberately replaced with a mother and a daughter. The director was led by a thought that he wanted to choose a hard nut to crack in terms of the topic and to tackle a new theme that had not found itself on his directorial path up to that point. Apart from that, he is very fond of watching female relationships on screen in general.  The wind at the back of the entire shooting phase was definitely the cast, always open-minded and ready to participate in student projects, guaranteeing high-level engagement without being paid for it.

Following the shooting, the director dedicated a lot of attention to film’s stylization. He spent hours on colour correction, which, with a mixture of the dominant yellow and the vivid red and blue, contributed to a warm atmosphere, which corresponds with the dynamic relationship between two women of different generations, as well as with the legend following the basic story, and finally unites in a happy, optimistic ending, in line with the genre carrying the stamp of a melodrama.

All in all, the director feels satisfied and has already arranged some new projects for the future that first of all include collaboration with a lot of people, the only thing he missed in this film in guerrilla-like conditions.

By Iva Cikojević