White White World

A mining town of Bor in Serbia: slag heaps, factory chimneys, gray housing estates, houses in ruin – a general feeling of hopelessness; everyone wants to escape from there. Ružica, a middle-aged woman, leaves prison where she did her time for murdering her husband, a legendary boxing coach in the town. She becomes involved in intimate relationships with two men. One of them is a younger former boxer (her husband’s charge), called ‘King’ in the town, who owns a little bar at present. Also Roza, Ružica’s daughter, who does not completely have an idea what to do with her life, establishes a relationship with ‘King’. The whole situation is resolved in a Greek-tragedy-like manner. In general, the film is a variation on the Theban Myths (with the Oedipus Myth in the first place), and tackles the subjects of forbidden desires, incest, and patricide, which are characteristic of these myths. White, White World was filmed in a para-documentary style, wrists hot, with short, abrupt shots, and edited in the way that disrupts the spatial and temporal continuity of given scenes. The zero style is additionally disrupted by opera-like scenes, when the film characters sing solemn songs which reflect their inner torments.

The film is screened as part of a partnership with the Cottbus IFF.