Film Archive

Roots

East of the West Competition 2021 / Koreni / Serbia 2021

A silent landscape flashes past the windows of a moving car conveying different sets of passengers. The conversations veer towards such diverse themes as carol-singing, nuclear waste, and the dangers of hornets’ nests. Tea Lukač’s anthropological probe gets by with a minimum of cinematic devices in order to deliver a focused study of the phenomena of memory, history and tradition.

Synopsis

A silent landscape flashes past the windows of a moving car conveying different sets of passengers. The conversations veer towards all manner of different themes – fistfuls of chocolate grabbed during carol-singing, a petition opposing the disposal of nuclear waste, or a skirmish with a hornets’ nest. Where ethnographic films tend towards description and objectivity, Tea Lukač’s anthropological probe uses staged scenes in order to create a mosaic of stories, whether voiced or intimated. This conceptual debut comprises only a few dominant aesthetic elements, thus giving rise to a more focused study of the phenomena of memory, history and tradition. Emphasis is placed on the sensory experience which nonetheless never detracts from the authenticity of the scenes and recorded testimonies.

Sandra Hezinová

About the film

80 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Tea Lukač / Dir. of Photography Sara Preradović / Editor Nataša Pantić / Producer Andrijana Sofranić Šućur / Production Nana 143 / Coproduction Set Sail Films / Contact NANA 143, Mirjam Wiekenkamp

About the director

Tea Lukač (1989, Serbia). Selected filmography: The Dearest Ones (Najmiliji, 2010, short), The Most Important Boy in the World (2016, doc., student film), Belonging (Pripadnost, 2020, medium-length doc.), Roots (Koreni, 2021, doc.).