The Four River Film Festival always likes to host its former contestants and give them the opportunity to show their films on the banks of the Karlovac rivers. This year, a young director from Požarevac Danilo Stanimirović returned to Karlovac, and we had the opportunity to watch his short film Bambiland, whose screenplay won the Pack & Pitch at Four River Film Festival three years ago. The film shows an abandoned amusement park, which was a big part of Danilo’s childhood, and the author gave us more details about the film!

What is it like to return to Karlovac?

Great, especially now that I’m coming back as a completely different person and in a whole new role. I first visited as a contestant whose film was in the selection, as a high school student, and I also participated in Pack & Pitch with the Bambiland project. Now I’m back with a film, which is quite different from what I worked on in high school. When I think back to that period now, it seems to me that those three or four years flew by terribly fast.

What was the biggest challenge while making the film?

In non-professional conditions, the hardest thing to do is to organize a team, gather the equipment, find locations, and do it all yourself, so I would say that the hardest part of making a film is – to make a film. We postponed the shoot twice, that was awful. The lesson is: you should never produce and direct a film at the same time.

Do you think your film will encourage the renovation of Bambiland?

No, no way. This film was not made with that intention, and it has not been screened in Požarevac yet, so I don’t know if anyone who can decide on such things has seen the film. As long as there is no commercial potential, nothing will happen.

What are you currently working on?

I’m doing many things at the moment. As soon as I return from Karlovac, I am shooting my next film, also in Požarevac. Immediately after Karlovac is Beldocs, an international documentary film festival, where the premiere of my documentary film Prokop will take place. Prokop is another bizarre place in Serbia: a railway station that both exists and doesn’t exist. I am also working on my graduate short fiction film Cats, which takes place in Zürich. The main character is a boy named Miša, whose parents are getting divorced; he finds an abandoned cat and projects all his family relations onto that cat.