Miroslav Mandić
Objem
Hug
Slovenia / Croatia, 2023, 14 min.
An olive is floating on the sea. We can feel it through the image, sounds and music. We personify it and due to our own anthropocentricity, we search for our essence in it.The waves spill over the rocks and resemble human breathing. Nature “thinks” and hears differently. For her we are only one of the elements, by no means the only nor the main one. The seasons are changing, from sunny to stormy weather, we notice changes in the colors and sounds of nature. The branch fell to the ground, the human hand plucks the fruit. Olive oil flows and resembles the waves of the sea. The ivy wraps itself around the old olive tree, like a hand, which convulsively strangles it with a squeeze. Does it really hug the tree with a feeling of love?
Miroslav Mandic was born in Sarajevo. He graduated film directing and screenwriting at Columbia University in New York. After a brief career in native Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the war of the 1990s he immigrated to the Czech Republic, where he directed numerous documentaries. Since 2005 he has lived and worked in Slovenia.
Mandic wrote and directed Borderline lovers (2005), which premiered at Locarno IFF, won Golden Letter award for best documentary at Munchen FF and Human Rights Award at Sarajevo FF. His fiction features Adria Blues (2013) and I Act, I am (2018) have premiered at Karlovy Vary FF and Cairo FF respectively. His latest feature film ‘Sanremo’ (2020) has played at more than 20 international festivals, including Tallinn, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Seattle and Melbourne. Sanremo was a Slovenian candidate for the foreign language Academy Award.