After their father was conscripted during the Kosovo War and the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, three sisters – Sonja (17), Dragana (15) and Tijana (7) start recording a Hi8 video diary in their home in Vrnjačka Banja. They film each other putting on make-up, picking cherries, playing board games and throwing parties, getting into heated arguments and helping their mother cook. The fragile, intimate world of the teenagers’ everyday life is the only thing protecting them from the harsh external reality of bombs, sirens and war. Emilija Gašić’s film debut is a coming-of-age story that brims with life in contrast to the events of war that disrupt carefree adolescent everyday life. The narration and editing skilfully interweave the perspectives of all three sisters, each of whom processes past events and sisterly squabbles independently. The sisters record absolutely everything and constantly use the camera to impose their views on each other – manipulating events and erasing old footage to insert new scenes. Gašić creates a compact and layered portrait of growing up in wartime, which relies on her own memories of a childhood in quarantine: missing school, the muffled sound of aeroplanes, the eerie echo of air raid sirens, blackouts, the fear for conscripted fathers, shelters, satirical songs, first loves and first losses. But the most impressive thing about the film is how 78 Days manages to recreate the look, texture and poetics of home movies from the nineties with documentary precision, authentically depicting their video aesthetics and spontaneous atmosphere. Drawing attention to the way cameras mediate and complicate relationships between household members, 78 Days presents an insightful study into technological ethnography in which we observe the social dynamics of a single shared camera household.
*The screening will be followed by a Q&A with editor Jovana Filipović.
Awards and Festivals:
International Film Festival Rotterdam (2024) – world premiere; IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival (2024); Cyprus Film Days International Festival (2024) – Best Film Award
Emilija Gašić (1991) is an award-winning Serbian filmmaker, currently residing in New York. She graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in cinematography. In 2020 she developed her first screenplay for 78 Days at the Venice Biennale College of Cinema. She co-founded Istok Films with Alex Wiske. She has shot films in the USA, Norway, France and the Czech Republic. She is a Nikon Storytellers Award recipient and a Volker Bahnemann nominee.