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'Sun Never Again' co-writer and director David Jovanović sat down with THR's Jordan Mintzer for a discussion about the Serbian drama film in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.
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00:00Hello and welcome to THR Presents. My name is Jordan Mintzer. I'm film critic at The Hollywood
00:10Reporter. I'm here today with David Jovanovic, director of Sun Never Again, which is Serbia's
00:17official contender for best international feature. Nice to have you with us today, David.
00:22Yeah, thank you for having me.
00:23Actually, I have a first question, which is pretty simple. The title of the film, Sun Never
00:29Again, where does that come from?
00:32Yeah, so the whole story was inspired by, you know, the song The Ballad of Hollis Brown by
00:39Bob Dylan, the version by David Lynch. And that was the whole inspiration for the story at the
00:47beginning. But then also there is another song on his album called Sun Can't Be Seen No More,
00:52which then seemed from the beginning that it would be a great fit for our film. So then
00:57we also are using that the music and then this was our interpretation of that title.
01:03Gotcha. And yeah, obviously, it meant something to me when I watched the film, because you're
01:08dealing with a very special place, which is a village on the edge of a huge coal mine. And,
01:14you know, where we can imagine pollution and other things will, you know, block out the light.
01:18I want to know how you found this kind of setting and why you decided to stage a movie there.
01:24Yeah. So, well, as I said, the idea was to make a film based, inspired by that song,
01:30Ballad of Hollis Brown, which is about a father who lives in a kind of surreal place where the
01:37air is polluted, where the water is black, where there is coyote singing at night. And then
01:42those were kinds of visuals that inspired the story at the beginning, because I wanted to explore,
01:47like, how can you survive in a place like that? And I wanted to make these surreal images.
01:53But then very soon after the initial idea, me and the co-writer, Georgi Kwasic, who is also my best
01:59friend, we went to my grandmother's house, who lived at the time in a mining village, where I spent a lot
02:05of time when I was a kid. And then we just realized that all these surreal kind of things that
02:11were inspirational for us to make the film about, were real in that mining place. So then we just
02:22found out that all that surrealism is actually very real for those people. And we realized how
02:28universal that, that theme is, and that it's not like just something that happens in Serbia. In that
02:36song, it's something that happened in like, I think, North Dakota. But then it's also like everywhere
02:40around the world, wherever you go, you can see that there is like a huge corporation coming to a very
02:46small place. And then they exploit all the people in the nature and everything just for the profits.
02:51And then that's when we decided we have to put that, that story in that mining place and then to build
02:57the whole story around a father and the son living in a mining village.
03:02Yeah. And in that story, what happens, I'm not going to give everything away, but you know,
03:07you have a father who doesn't want to leave. He's one of the last holdouts in this village.
03:13And you have a son who kind of looks up to his father and I, in a certain way, idolizes him. And,
03:18you know, you, but from the audience perspective, we're seeing the father as somebody very different
03:24and the son sees him. Yeah. Talk a little about that dichotomy between the father and the son and
03:30the different points of view in the film.
03:34Yeah. Well, I was, I mean, when I, when I listened to that story, to that song, it was
03:41about that depressed father who doesn't know what to do, but then we realized it's not really such an
03:46easy, I mean, from our perspective, from people who never, who never set foot in a mining place,
03:52it looks like a very easy choice to make. You don't want to live in a place where everything
03:57is polluted and you're going to die and so on. But then as the more people we met in those mining
04:03places, we realized they are kind of like boiling frogs. You know, it's like something that when they
04:08were born, it was there. And still to this day, it's there. And it's something that happens very
04:13slowly and you're not easily aware of what is going on around you. And then you are like,
04:20you have a choice to leave everything you built like forever or stay there and die. But then all
04:26those people constantly live with the idea that it's going to go away very soon. And then we heard,
04:32I mean, even we put it, we put it in the film, there is a sentence where the father says,
04:37a couple of years and they're going to go away. But that's something that they are listening to for a
04:42hundred years before. That's once a mining mining corporation comes to a place, they're never going
04:48to leave. And then the idea was, then firstly, we started making the film, like writing the film
04:55from the father's perspective. But then once we set foot in those mining places, and when we saw
05:00how surreal those images are and those lives and everything that's happening to them, then we realized
05:06that for us, like his viewers to be able to kind of believe in such a surreal place, it would be easily,
05:15more easily kind of communicated if it was through the child's eye, because his point of view can be
05:22kind of surreal and full of imaginary and so on. But then during the process of shooting it, then
05:28like their relationship opened up. And then I realized that the story is actually about them.
05:33And that's why we switch perspectives from the father's point of view, but also from the child's.
05:38Yeah, because in the child's point of view, what's, you know, what's fascinating is he doesn't see
05:44the dangers or the ugliness necessarily of the place or the pollution. You know, you have this
05:50motif where he's playing with the trucks and the toys, and it's almost like he wants to mine himself.
05:56And for him, it's beautiful and filled with wonder. And I really, I thought that was something you
06:02really, there's like the point of view of the child is this kind of magical realist point of view,
06:07almost poetic. And then the point of view of the dad is much more realistic and almost like a
06:13documentary at times. I'm wondering, you know, what kind of influences stylistically,
06:20like other movies or directors, you know, you thought of when you made the film?
06:24Yeah, well, that was kind of when you go to that, to those mining places, and then even if you want
06:30to make a documentary, then it's so unimaginable that it kind of leans towards something which is
06:38surreal and then hence the magical realism. But then also, it's a part where I spent a lot of my
06:45childhood days in a mining village where my grandmother used to live. And that's when I
06:51realized that, I mean, I realized after that I was making the film from myself as a child,
06:56which was my kind of point of view where everything seemed so, like, so spectacular,
07:03and there was some beauty in it, when I was not aware of all the things coming from it,
07:09like all the problems that it causes. And then that's where that kind of naturalistic documentary
07:16kind of thing intervened with that, like magical realism part. But then we were very inspired,
07:24me and the director of photography, we looked at photographs from Josef Kudelka and from Josef
07:30Sudek, which are Czech documentaries, and they had that kind of very naturalistic kind of vibe,
07:38but always their images full of fog, full of some kind of mysticism and some kind of surrealistic
07:45approach in ordinary everyday things. But then also we, I saw many times a film by Paul Thomas
07:52Anderson, there will be blood during the production, which was kind of a stylistic
07:59inspiration in terms of trying to maintain that naturalistic approach, especially in the camera
08:06movements and the way light is like captured and so on. And that was inspiration for us. But we also
08:12listened to a lot of music. During back in the day, we listened a lot to David Lynch's music, we listened to
08:18John Greenwood, who made all the, I think all the music for PTA's movies, which was kind of
08:25inspiration on Neil's style. But then also, like after we finished the film, and then a lot of people
08:30in Serbia saw it, they say, they said that it had a lot to do, I mean, it was kind of a natural
08:37successor of the Yugoslavian black wave. Right. Yeah, I wasn't aware back in the time when I was making it,
08:44it wasn't my idea to make. But then, when I kind of analyzed why it had a resemblance with those kind of
08:52films, it's because of the themes, they were all also dealing with similar themes. Hence, they were
08:57shooting in similar places. And then there is a, like a story when we shot that scene where the god is leaving
09:04the place. That actor, Satosar Cetkvić, who acted in a film, wrote to Katanga, like 50 years ago, he was shot in the
09:12same place about miners back in the day. Then he said that he was walking in the exact same path
09:20as we were. Okay. Which is like 50 years later, nothing changed. So, I mean, yeah, definitely,
09:26I thought about some of those films. I also thought about something like Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice,
09:32you know, with the burning, the burning greenhouse and, and that kind of that poetic imagery, and also
09:37the religion, the role of religion and religious icons and gods. Is that something that, you know,
09:43plays a role in the people in this village? Is religion still very important there? And is that
09:49something you put in the film for that reason? Yeah, yeah. Thank you for mentioning Tarkovsky. It was
09:54like a all-time favorite director. But then I didn't want to make an impression that it was like so heavily
10:01inspired by him. But then when you say... I saw it a little. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's,
10:08the religion is very important to people in villages. And then that's one part of the story.
10:14Because like, you cannot really make a story about those people without religion involved. And I think
10:19that goes on wherever you go. But then there is also another thing, which is, I think for everybody of
10:24us, each, each of us, when you are in a tough situation, and you are like facing death or facing
10:31an impossible choice, I think almost every human being would then like turn to God, whatever kind
10:38of God that is, or a higher power or whatever, you just, I felt you need some kind of guidance in that,
10:45in those situations. And since this is an impossible choice for them, it was only natural that like
10:50religion would play such a big role. And then for me, it was very interesting that like how the
10:56character develops through religion that like, for one instance, he doesn't care about religion. But
11:02at the same time, when he swears at God, he kind of makes the gesture, like, with like the cross. But
11:09then also, as the story progresses, he turns more and more to God, as like, whenever you are in such a
11:15situation, you would do. But then also, kind of how that young priest is a character who just came
11:21there, we don't know where he came from. He speaks a different dialect, he's really trying to help those
11:26people, but he's kind of failing for moments to understand what's going on. Because it's not so easy
11:34just to say, love resolves everything at some certain points that that looks that seems impossible to
11:41resolve. And for the child, yeah, religion, I mean, he looks up at the kind of icons. And again,
11:46it's almost like a surreal thing for the child. It's part of his kind of whole surreal vision.
11:51One of the stylistic devices I wanted to ask about was, do you have this kind of frame where you have
11:56like an almost an oval eye, like an eye within a frame? You know, what's that about? Where did that
12:02come from? Yeah, I mean, we had I had this question so many times before, then I realized there is so
12:09many different kind of people who read so many different things into it, that I'm now collecting
12:15all these different interpretations. So what was your take on it? And then I can explain what they
12:20meant. I mean, for me, it was like a human eye. So because it was kind of eye shaped, you know,
12:25like a half open eye. And so I just thought it was like, an eye onto the world that that's like,
12:32almost like a different vision than the regular world of the film. It was like an eye within the film.
12:37Well, yeah, that's actually very close to what I had in mind, because I got like from people,
12:43it's like the gravestone pictures. But then there is also like those things that all the
12:49grannies make at home. But then there can also be the child's eye into the lives of all the other
12:57people. But then somebody said it's also a god's eye. And then somebody said it's like,
13:03like, do you want did you want to say that these people because all the frames around the people
13:07is more or less always the mind? Did you want to make like that the mind is surrounding them at all
13:14times? But then actually, the idea was, even in the script, I wanted to make like portraits of every
13:20character. Like, you know, like, in Brechtian plays, you always have these kind of separate
13:27lines of like the story, where you can like, see into each character's own kind of arc, without like,
13:36out of the context of the whole story. And then I wanted to like the father has a portrait, the kid,
13:41the mother, but then also the priest with the religion, and then the grannies, which is the culture.
13:47But then also there is like this music, which is kind of that, like soul of those people. But then
13:52there is also that, at the end, you have also the portrait of the plan house, which is kind of
13:58the symbol of from the more from them all. But then, given like, it was a low budget production,
14:04then the idea was to shoot every one of them in a blue hour kind of set setup where there are
14:12artificially lit. But then given the tough production schedule, we failed to shoot them in
14:17the same way. And then when we came to the editing room, we realized that you cannot understand what
14:23they represented. And then we started searching for like some kind of other solutions. And then we
14:30were experimenting, like they were black and white, they were square, they were like, they had very
14:35different shapes and approaches in order to create them. And then at the end, we settled for this like
14:42eye kind of thing, which a frame outside. And that was like, the idea was to have only black frame,
14:49but then somebody saw it like a friend who is a very famous Serbian theater director, Milos Lolic.
14:54And then he said, it resembles like Peter Brooks kind of movies. And then to steal Peter's idea to have
15:02frame it within a frame, which then opened a whole new, like, like way to interpret those things.
15:11And I guess one last question, because I think, yeah, we have, we have a few more minutes. The yeah,
15:18in terms of the improvisation of the film, how much of it was, you know, did you guys have a full
15:24script? Or did you read? I felt like some of it felt like it was, you know, more improvised,
15:30some of it was scripted. How did that work between the, you know, the real and the fiction?
15:35Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I had a script, which was very like, from start to end, it was very clear
15:41what's going to happen in the film. But then once we set foot in that village where we shot it, because we
15:48went and we saw all the mining villages in Serbia. And then this was the most
15:54like cinematic, so to say, it was like, wherever you put the camera, you have the whole mind
15:59like behind you. And then I kind of felt that that world was giving me so much that I had to be open
16:06to it. And then like a lot of stories, like small images, and a lot of that culture from that region
16:13kind of found its own way into the film. And I'm just now working with a very famous Serbian director,
16:19Miloš Divojević, who is doing his last film, and I am co producing it. And then he said,
16:25you just have to start and then the film shoots itself. And then that was my idea that I have a
16:30script scripted scene. But then on set, if it if something opens up to me, I would I would chase that,
16:37and I would have something to lean back to. But then, like, almost like 80% of the film open something
16:43open to us. Like, for example, there is a lot of non actors in the film, like graveyard scene.
16:50And then I just put them in that scene. And I was like, yeah, you can like just pretend you just what
16:57you would do on the graveyard scene when there is like grave diggers, and then a priest comes.
17:01And then since they never saw a camera before, and then there is that guy who actually was the
17:06real grave digger who diggers that grave for the scene. And then I, because he was like the same
17:13costume as our character, I asked him to participate in the scene. And then once the priest enters the
17:18scene, he asked the priest, are you hungry? Did you have breakfast? And that wasn't scripted,
17:24but it's something like it makes sense for him to ask a priest once he sees him in the morning.
17:29And then a lot of things like that opened up for us. And then I was just like, I put them in the
17:36in the script. And then, like, one day, we saw a guy who was leaving the place with a tractor, and then
17:42he had all his, like furniture on it, and he was just leaving. But then we failed to capture that like
17:49as a documentary, like as a document, but then we like, yeah, we faked it, we make it again with another
17:57guy. And then it just... How did generally did the people in this remote mining village, how did
18:03they react to, you know, movie crew of like, film guys coming in and trying to make a film? Were they
18:08cool? Or did it, it wasn't problematic? I think they were the key that this film happened, because
18:14it really helped us so much. And a lot of work behind the camera that was like digging the grave,
18:20and then making mud in the house. And then a lot of production design work and costume work and so on
18:26was done by them, provided by them, so to say, they gave us everything they had. And they were also
18:32cooking for us. And they were kind of like, the most important thing for me at the end was when we had
18:38the premiere. And then all those people from that village came. And then they said, first, we are
18:45very glad that you told the story as is. And then, like, first, you helped us feel to feel seen,
18:54because that's something that's going on to millions of people around the world every single day. And
18:59like, from time to time, it becomes like a very actual subject. And then we all pay attention to
19:03date. But then we all again, forget. So then for them, they felt seen. And that somebody is taking
19:10care about that and like, listening to them. But then another thing they said, you helped us for
19:16those three months to like escape to another world, which was your world. And that was very important
19:21for us to kind of experience something new. So it was a really, really beautiful collaboration. And they
19:26became very good friends. And like, I'm keeping them posted about this whole Oscars journey. And they are
19:33cheering for it. And it's very, very lovely.
19:36Hopefully, they'll watch this this interview, maybe. I think that's a good way to end. And I
19:42think, you know, again, when you see the film, you really do see the immersion in this place. And
19:47the way you kind of turn that place into a whole story. So, you know, I strongly recommend the film.
19:52And thanks for talking with us today at THR Presents. Best of luck for that for the Oscars.
19:58Thank you so much.
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