When the Phone Rang

Kada je zazvonio telefon

TIFF65: Greek Premiere
Can a phone call erase an entire life, a country, your very identity? In Iva Radivojević’s first narrative feature (Evaporating Borders, Aleph), 11-year-old Lana answers the phone one Friday in 1992, and from that moment, her world changes dramatically. The film opens with the line, “This story took place in a country that now exists only in books, films, and memories,” and through the reenactment of that fateful phone call, it weaves a meditation on loss, identity, and displacement. The call that Lana answers brings news of her grandfather’s death, but it also signals the beginning of the end for her country. Radivojević intricately blends the personal and the collective, crafting a mesmerizing cinematic reflection on memory and trauma. The film unfolds with the fluidity of memories, carrying the patina of a past era and a world that now exists only within us.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Iva Radivojević
Script: Iva Radivojević
Cinematography: Martin DiCicco
Editing: Iva Radivojević
Sound: Leandros Ntounis
Music: Iva Radivojević
Actors: Natalija Ilinčić, Srna Vasić, Vasilije Zečević, Danica Maksimović, Anton Augustinov, Mila Drobnjak, Dunja Vladisavljević, Ivana Pančić, Ibro Sakić, Slavica Bajčeta
Production: Set Sail Films, Ivaasks Films
Producers: Andrijana Sofranić Šućur, Marija Stojnić, Madeleine Molyneaux, Iva Radivojević
Co-producers: Genoveva Petrovits
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: Serbia, USA
Production Year: 2024
Duration: 73'
Contact: Set Sail Films, Ivaasks Films
Awards/Distinctions: Special Mention – Locarno FF 2024
In association with: Picture Palace Pictures

Iva Radivojević

Iva Radivojević was born in Belgrade and spent her early years in Yugoslavia and Cyprus. She is an artist and filmmaker who currently divides her time between subarctic Alaska, Brooklyn, and Lesvos. Her work presents itself as a collection of fragments (observations, poetry, images, sounds, melodies, languages) which collage together to connect into a ruminating whole. Her work circles around displacement and belonging, seeking to connect to the metaphysical or the magical. Iva’s films were screened at New York Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, SXSW, DocLisboa, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), PBS, and New York Times Op-Docs. She is the recipient of the Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Princess Grace Special Project Award, and Film Fellowship. When not working on her own films, Iva enjoys editing, cutting both documentary and narrative films; her credits include Celia Rowson-Hall's feature MA (Venice Film Festival, 2015) and All That Passes by Through A Window That Doesn’t Open, an editor and co-writer, winner of the Regard Neuf Award at Visions Du Réel in 2017.

Filmography

2010 Following Crickets (short)
2011 Thread (short doc)
2011 Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution (short doc)
2012 Mixba (short doc)
2014 Evaporating Borders (doc)
2018 Nattο (short doc)
2021 Aleph
2024 When the Phone Rang