J Paul Johnson
First-time feature filmmaker Bruno Anković has made waves already with his feature film Celebration. It premiered last summer at the 2024 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and then won four major awards—Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Male Lead, and Best Cinematography—at the 2024 Pula Summer Film Festival. More recently, it showed as part of the American Film Institute’s 37th European Union Film Showcase in Washington, DC. The film is adapted from the Croatian novel of the same name by Damir Karakaš. In it, a soldier hiding in the Croatian woods in 1945 reflects back on three earlier moments in time that led to his current predicament.
The film’s cast and crew deliver convincing performances and create an expressive mise-en-scene depicting the lush, if foreboding, Croatian countryside of the mid-20th century. With its story of a soldier-in-hiding reflecting on his life before the war, Celebration aims to convey an ambitious theme: that the forces conspiring to make ideological monsters of young men are pervasive and powerful.
Anković is a graduate of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. He has directed short fiction and documentary films and tv formats. Since 1999 he has been working as a director of a great number of high-profile commercials winning awards and recognition. From his home in Croatia, he recently spoke with Film Obsessive’s J Paul Johnson about the adaptation, production, themes, and reception of Celebration. The transcript following the video below has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Bruno, welcome, and congratulations on your film. Let me have you start a little bit just by telling our viewers and readers a little bit about Celebration.
Bruno Anković: It’s an adaptation of a novel, Celebration by Damir Karakaš, a very known novel in the region in Yugoslavia. It’s a very contemporary novel. I think it was published in 2019. When I first read the novel, I was extremely impressed in its clear and indirect history of our Balkans region, Eastern European generally, let’s say. And the film is very similar to the novel. The novel is by the way, published in USA, I think, maybe this summer also.
It is (in translation by Ellen Elias-Bursać), and it’s available as an e-book, on Kindle, which is where I was able to read the translation.
Okay, and it’s very similar. So through the elliptical structure of four different episodes, we are following the life of the main character, our protagonist and I should also say antagonist, Mijo and we are in a way, trying to understand why did he become a fascist soldier at the end, you know? So we are starting the movie as the novel: he is hiding in the forest. It’s the end of the Second World War. We have a new regime now in Yugoslavia. It was a communist regime. We have partisans in the village they are looking for them, the ex-Ustasa, ex-Nazi soldiers.
So the movie, let’s say, is about how it’s possible that a young man fall into this right-wing extremist ideology. It is about the past, but I think—and that’s why we did the movie—we are thinking that the world didn’t really change in the last hundred years. So we can see all around us new extreme ideologies rising and wars and everything. I’s also a movie about our history, our Balkan Yugoslav history about people living in that village, so this is some kind of a mixture.
I always say that we did this movie for our kids, you know, to be smarter and cleverer than us, because our fathers and our grandfathers were fascist soldiers, in a way. You have to understand: I don’t think that viewers would know that Croatia was a Nazi puppet state in the Second World War. This is an important history lesson. It was a Nazi puppet state. And after the Second World War, we had communism in Yugoslavia, and we didn’t really think about that was it possible? We judged those people: we said, okay, they were fascist, we don’t like them, et cetera, et cetera, but we really didn’t find a way to understand how is that possible?
So I think that this is a time for that.
There were thousands of young men like Mijo, I assume, who willingly joined that cause, desperate for the independence and freedom it offered, but unable or unwilling to think through or or deal fully with the consequences of what their actions would be.
Yeah, I don’t think that they really understood what’s going on, you know? As I said, it is a history movie, but during shooting and now during interviews and everything, everybody asks me, who is Mijo today, you know? And I always say maybe he’s some Russian soldier. Who is now fighting in Ukrainian war, you know, for Russia. And he’s probably from some village. I don’t know how much you know Russia. I worked a lot there. There are, of course, big cities like Moscow. But if you go from Moscow, maybe 10 miles, you will find small villages, very poor. Very poor people, socially poor, poor of education.
And those soldiers who are now fighting in Ukraine are probably those guys which are fighting for Russia because the regime Putin’s regime told them, Okay, you have to fight for our freedom, freedom of our people, Ukraine, for future, for better future for Russia. And he’s probably going there even because of some payment or something, you know, or he can get some food. Say. In movie, it’s about the food, about as you said, the idea of a new country and better future. But of course, it’s a totally mistaken ideology.
And as an American, it was hard for me not to think of the prospect of a young man being told by media celebrities and influencers that he’s oppressed and then falling under the wing of a militia. It is a theme grounded in the past, but not limited to the past, if you will.
Mmm-hmm.
The novel Celebration must have presented some challenges to you as a filmmaker, since so much of it is told and filtered through his perspective in a way that just lets the author of the story say certain things that film language doesn’t have the same immediate kind of access to. As a director, what unnerved you a little bit about making an adaptation of the novel?
Yeah, it wasn’t easy. It’s a small novel. It doesn’t have a lot of how to say, things going on, you know, it’s like, it’s all in the retrospective of a man which is hiding in the forest and thinking about the past, you know. And it’s very lyrical, let’s say. There is not much dialogue. And it’s only four days in life, you know? So it was really a challenge for us because we had to we wanted to be as close to a novel as possible, of course, in a different medium, which is film. But we wanted to somehow really put this novel onto the screen, you know. So this was challenging.
At the end, we need to find a key how to do it because it’s very lyrical. So what we decided to do is go with this we called it “controlled documentary.” What we really wanted to do is be there with actors, you know, just to the viewer, maybe to feel it more like a documentary than a narrative. Of course, it’s a narrative. But, you know, we used vintage lenses from the ’70s, you know, to go to this poetic way of cinematography of, let’s say, like the Taviani brothers in Italian Neorealism, you know. We didn’t use a lot of [artificial] lighting, you know, because we wanted to be very documentary. We used lighting only when it was really necessary because of technical reasons, you know.
And for us, the nature was very important, you know, nature, the sound of the nature, the people living there, that small village, big mountain around him, the forest. So everything that he had really poetically in the book, in the novel, we tried to put it on the screen. I think that I probably think that we managed probably because of the critics say that we did.
In some ways, it strikes me as a war film, but a war film without combat in that the battles have largely either been fought in the past or they are about to be enjoined soon. Watching what unfolds on screen, it seems to me so so realistic and so challenging for your protagonist to be hiding where he is in the forest. He’s clearly been ravaged by the effects of war. It could not have been an easy shoot!
It wasn’t. It was a low-budget movie, to start, because we shoot it during the pandemic, and we found our movies in Europe, especially in small countries of Europe from foundations, you know, different funds. And because of Coronavirus, everything stopped. So we got our funding from Croatia and some Slovenian money, and then we decided to shoot it with that money because the inflation arose. So it was it was a decision to do that. The side, it was very heavy because we shoot it really in these mountain areas. And it was the winter shoot was like, I think, -17 Celsius. So it was really, really cold. And the summer was like 40 degrees Celsius. Then it was really hot. So it’s extreme extreme nature there and extreme shooting because of that, because we didn’t have enough money, of course.
But then we decided this is why also, we decided maybe to release some lighting to be there, you know, to have a small crew, not a big crew, to have a small crew and what was really in a way, good for our budget. But it’s very have to say, maybe very sad in reality, is that we really found those villages which people are living in today. It is like an hour away highway from Zagreb, which is the capital city of Croatia, and people are still living there without electricity, without Internet, in those houses which were built like 100 years ago, in the conditions like 100 years ago, it is sad because those are really remote parts of the country.
It was also very interesting for us and for the actors because, we didn’t know how to put the actors in the minds of people from a hundred years ago—how to grab this past, how to make them feel like the people. But then what we found out is that people there are living still like that. And what we decided is just to live with them. So the main actor was living in this village for maybe a month, just to feel the village, to understand. The main actress also. So this was kind of a method, let’s say, in acting the way how they really feel that characters and that nature and that village and everything. But this was maybe as for shooting.
And the problem was also because we shot it in different periods.. So we had to make the pose for two or three months because there is four periods in a movie.
You mean the four different time periods. And they necessitate even different cast members or different actors playing in the protagonist, Mijo, et cetera.
Yeah yeah, yeah. So that the main actor (Bernard Tomić), at the end, he lost, I think, 15 kilos. This is like after the war. And he was a normal guy. So he just need to lose a lot of weight. And he was he didn’t shave for maybe a month I don’t know, not a month. Six months, let’s say. So he was really preparing for this.
There are a couple shots in the film that I want to ask you about. One scene in particular that takes place in the valley as Mijo, his woman Drenke, and her brother begin to join this large party that is headed towards the celebration of Croatian independence that’s going to lead to their fascist state. It takes place across a long valley. There must be scores of extras joining in. It was a stunning shot. That must have been complex to get your crew to that place and to get all of the extras in place and managed the way that you had.
Yeah. It it’s really remote remote, this place. It doesn’t have any road next to it. So we had some, I think, maybe a kilometer and a half. There was a road. So they came with the buses, and the extras came from Zagreb because this part is really rural and some people came from those villages, but they don’t really like to be in the movie, you know, and then don’t really understand it. So we brought, like, really professional extras from Zagreb, and it wasn’t easy. We had it budgeted for one day.
So it was very important for us that day would be, you know, sunny. This is important because it is spring and it was important for us that we managed to do it in one day. There are two scenes which are happening one with the gypsies and then this with lot of extras and everything. So it was maybe the most complicated in that way shot. But it was far away. The road was far away, but the road on the other locations was even far more, you know, so it was there are some locations in the mountains in which we had to walk maybe for half an hour from the road. The whole crew with the camera and everything just to be possible to shoot there, was a small crew, maybe 30 or 40 people in a crew. So it was possible to do it that nobody really argues and says, I won’t do it. I think we were a small family!
The other scene I wanted to ask you about in the film was the use of the archival documentary footage near the end. Not to give away a spoiler of the film, but it’s an interesting transition. You move into it, and suddenly you feel a little bit like you’re watching Triumph of the Will almost, though not as regimented and organized. But I just wanted to ask you about accessing and locating and using that kind of footage for the purposes you are at the end of the film.
Yes. We didn’t know while we were writing a script, we didn’t know that that will be the end. We tried to find a lot of material for that period. And those are those are really celebrations. That’s it. And we wanted to find it and to show it again, to the actors, and to us to just to understand the period, just as a showcase of that period, you know, just to find out. But when I saw it for the first time, I remember it was it’s in Belgrade in this archive. It was The Archives of Yugoslavia, so still some movies are in Belgrade.
When I saw it there, I was crying. I was crying because I saw how young people, village people, you know, they are cheering as if The Beatles came, you know? They’re like, they really don’t know what’s going on. You see on their faces that they really don’t see ideology. They don’t see the war which is coming. They don’t see that this is the worst moment of their lives, you know, and they are cheering and they’re happy, you know? And when I saw it for the first time, then we decided, Okay, you know, there is no how to say there is no narrative feature narrative which you can shoot, which will be as horrifying, as this documentary footage.
And nothing is really going on there, you know? There is no blood there either. You know, this is like the whole movie, as you said, there’s no blood. This blood is in the veins, in the, you know, it’s coming from outside, you know? So nothing is really happening, and they’re very happy. You have a lot of shots of happy young people cheering to this Nazi regime. And I was crying because of that, you know.
At Karlovy Vary I had an interview with a French journalist, and she came to me after the movie and she brought me footage of Marine Le Pen’s victory, two days after the first elections in France, and Le Pen had won the first not the second, but the first one. And she brought me footage of young people cheering with French flags and waving and cheering and everything and she said, Oh, this is your protagonist and antagonist today in France. And it’s really the similar thing, those kids that don’t really understand what’s going on
I understand completely. And, you know, we’re conducting this interview on the on a sobering anniversary here (January 6) in the United States of—literally—an attempt to overthrow the government. That was not a youth movement, but it was a violent attempt at overthrow and a devastating moment in our country’s history. So I am sympathetic to the sobering reflection that this is a movement that wasn’t limited to this one guy in a forest, but this is something taking place all over your country. And is not limited to that specific historical moment.
After these celebrations of Nazism, we had celebrations of communism, you know, this was a new regime, and it was really awful also. So it’s always this part of the world, it’s always some kind of this is a movie also about that, you know, this circle of history, which is repeating in this patriarchy.
What what’s next for the film? Is it continuing its festival run?
We were like maybe 20 days ago in Washington in this American Film Institute showcase of European Union films, and they show like 30 or 40 best, as they say, Best European movies, Best in European cinema, let’s say. Today and tomorrow, I think that we are in the Haifa Film Festival in Israel. I think that after Karlovy Vary we had maybe 25 festivals all around the world, and it’s still going on. So I’m not sure which is the next one. I’d have to ask my producers not to be wrong!
Well, congratulations to you on its successes so far, Bruno, and best of wishes for its continued run. I hope it finds as wide an audience as possible.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Paul.
And thank you for joining us at Film Obsessive today.
Thank you, and sorry for my English!
Your English is beautiful!
[Laughs]
