Film Archive

Monument to Michael Jackson

East of the West - Competition 2014 / Spomenik Majklu Džeksonu / Serbia, Germany, North Macedonia, Croatia 2014

Barber Marko decides to make a last desperate attempt to save his crumbling marriage. In order to impress his beloved wife Ljubinka, he comes up with an absurd idea for bringing his dying town back to life – his plan is to build a monument to Michael Jackson. In his bittersweet comedy, Darko Lungulov employs gentle detachment to touch on a number of social problems, thereby confirming his narrative skill and flair for creating an effective milieu.

Synopsis

It’s 2009. Marko is a daydreaming barber with a head full of ideas (rarely realized) and a marriage on the rocks. Disappointed by life, Marko’s wife Ljubinka refuses to give him another chance and is determined to leave their dying town for good. Marko decides to make a last ditch effort to save his crumbling relationship. Desperate, he comes up with an absurd proposal for bringing life back to the comatose community, thereby impressing Ljubinka. His novel idea is to attract tourism by replacing the old communist monument with a statue of Michael Jackson. Somewhat surprisingly, he gets the locals on board but, unfortunately, Marko’s plans don’t sit well with the mayor.… In his bittersweet comedy about the adventures of a likable barber, Darko Lungulov stands somewhat aloof as he touches on a number of social problems; he also confirms his narrative skill and flair for creating an effective milieu, already demonstrated in his internationally successful debut Here and There.

About the film

95 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Darko Lungulov / Screenplay Darko Lungulov / Dir. of Photography Mathias Schöningh / Music Dejan Pejović / Editor Dejan Urošević / Producer Darko Lungulov, Snežana Penev / Production This and That/Papa Films / Coproduction av medien penrose/Penrose Film, Dream Factory, Aka Film, Propeler Film / Cast Boris Milivojević, Nataša Tapušković, Dragan Bjelogrlić, Ljuba Bandović, Toni Mihajlovski, Branislav Trifunović, Mirjana Karanović / Contact Films Boutique

About the director

Darko Lungulov (Belgrade, Yugoslavia) moved from his Serbian birthplace to New York in 1991 after the outbreak of civil war; there he graduated in film studies from the City College of New York. His medium-length documentary Escape (2004) was presented at a number of documentary festivals (e.g. IDFA and Leipzig). He debuted in features in 2009 with Here and There, which earned 20 awards at more than 50 international film festivals following its Tribeca premiere. At KVIFF it was presented in the Variety Critics’ Choice section. Monument to Michael Jackson is his second feature.