Dida

After Filmexplorer’s daily live podcast on Clubhouse during the 2021 edition of Visions du Réel you will find here above an excerpt of the discussion with Nikola Ilić and Corina Schwingruber Ilić, where they tell us about the almost unintentional beginning of the film project, the long process of shooting, in dialogue with the work at the editing table. Moreover, we discover something more about Dida’s world (4’30’’), her participation and her reception of the movie (6’55’’).

The fundamental role of humour, which is certainly a specific virtue of Dida, in approaching difficult moments of life is also discussed at length (5’30’’). Together with a certain homogeneity of the music, it constitutes an element of cohesion that balances a storytelling rich in dramatic changes, which we experience as rapidly pace, thanks also to a dynamic editing. If sometimes, during the viewing of the movie, I would have wanted to know more – more about Dida’s life and hobbies, Nikola’s inner turmoil, Corina’s perspective on her new family, or about the urban context in general – by the end of the film I felt how this “light touch” on the characters reveals a respectful modesty in exhibiting the private and emotional life of oneself and one’s own loved ones. Suggestion is sometimes more effective than saying it loud and clear. Moreover, this “light touch” seems to perfectly interpret Dida’s spirit itself: the form of films will absorb her attitude, thereby becoming a gesture of love, a homage.

Quite coherent with this modesty is the position of the camera, one that does not give in to the temptation of close-ups, which would so easily have been “catchy” with exceptional characters like Dida or her mother. As viewers we have not the voyeuristic privilege of a physical intimacy, which is yet still rendered through the real distance Nikola and Corina themselves had in the tiny apartment. Neither panoramic (we remain almost all the time within apartments) nor insisting on the person, Dida makes us face the normal intimacy of a house, with its normal and real challenges – such as taking care of one’s own parents, a huge question by which we will certainly have the precious possibility to measure our distance from a different culture…

This perspective of the camera strengthens our assimilation of the point of view of Nikola in particular. It would not be a mistake to consider Dida more a self-portrait than a portrait, or a self-portrait made through the loving essay of portraying his own family. This is why the appearance of Nikola on the screen comes as a natural consequence of the general positioning of the film. His non-being an actor will consequently manifest the peculiar quality of real gentleness. Dear Nikola, in Dida’s and your “vision du réel”, have you possibly discovered something new of your mother? Perhaps that she partially anticipated the artist that you are?