Let’s support young artists, environmental activists in making their movie

A creative group called Pointless Films, which gathers young film artists and has a notable track record at festivals around the world, now wants to produce Sun Never Again, a short film about ore exploitation in Serbia, and to draw attention to the environmental deterioration in the country. They still need EUR 12,000, so we call on all socially responsible companies to help.

“The film is about seven-year-old boy Dule, who lives with his parents in a small village in eastern Serbia. His home disappears as a result of the expansion of a corporate mine that has spread almost to the family’s doorstep, while Dule reveals the cruel rules of the adult world through the prism of childlike optimism, fantasy and mystique”, the film’s director David Jovanović says. The screenwriter is Đorđe Kosić.

The film is partly inspired by the childhood of director David Jovanović, who also lived next to a mine

The film is partly inspired by the childhood of David Jovanović, which he spent in Bosnia and Herzegovina in a small place near the edge of an open-cast iron mine near Omarska, where his grandmother still lives.

“During the development of the script, screenwriter Đorđe Kosić and I visited numerous mining villages and towns and met the people who live there. Those places seem like a completely different world. Rivers are polluted, houses are collapsing, crops are drying up and dying, and the sun is always hidden behind clouds of dust. However, all those people, whose basic human rights are endangered and who face authorities that are deaf to their appeals, are not giving up the fight. The story of the film is positioned in the heart of one such environmental problem, and at the same time it tries to capture that desire for life, and the struggle for it. I don’t think the people we met would have survived without that childlike optimistic view of the world, and I think we can learn a lot from them,” Jovanović revealed.

Pointless Films is raising funds through the World, Support the Film campaign and the Pointless Garden

In order to raise funds for the movie, these young and talented people launched the Keep the World, Support the Film campaign and designed the Pointless Garden, a self-sustaining microecosystem preserved in a glass jar – a small piece of nature.

The campaign also aims to draw attention to the deteriorating environmental conditions in which citizens of Serbia live and make Pointless Gardens awaken the desire to create small green oases.

“Pointless Garden is not only a microworld in which you will preserve a part of nature and which will enrich your everyday life, but also a way to support the fight to raise environmental awareness by supporting the film Sun Never Again,” according to Pointless Films.

Awards and the best contemporary domestic drama text

Jovanović is a senior at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. He has made several short films – M for Murder or ‘l’art pour l’art’, Sandman and Wonderful Day, for which he was awarded as the best director at the seventh edition of the Duka Fest in Banja Luka and received a special jury award at the fifth Golden Baklava Film Festival in Turkey.

The film will cost EUR 27,200 and EUR 8,500 still needs to be raised

Screenwriter Đorđe Kosić was a part of all of these movies, and during their making he graduated at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts but also wrote the plays Now is not July, which had its premiere at the city theater Semberija in Bijeljina, and Lullaby for Aleksija Rajčić, for which he received Sterija’s Award for the best contemporary domestic drama text in 2020.

They plan to shoot the film in 14 days at the beginning of April in the Serbian mining city of Bor. Pointless Films has already obtained the support of the Film Center Serbia, which pledged RSD 1.26 million (EUR 10,700). The film was also backed by environmentalist organization CEKOR, the City of Bor, the Municipality of Trstenik, Association of Young Researchers from Bor, Media Plus and Vision Team.

The total budget is estimated at EUR 30,000, but there is still about EUR 12,000  missing. Anyone who wants to help can contact Pointless Films at belgrade@pointlessfilms.rs.

Actors Branka Katić, Svetozar Cvetković, Radovan Miljanić and Joakim Tasić will play in the movie.