God Won't Help ( Pantano neé pomoiv ), the sophomore effort by Croatian-manner writer Hana Jušić ( Stop Staring at My Plate ), is not your typical period piece. Not at all!
“Teresa, a Chilean Woman, Leads to a Firmly Structured and Isolated Mountain Community of Croatian Shepherds in the Early 20th Century, Claiming to Be the Widow of Their Émigré Brother,” Reads a Synopsis for the Film, Cast is Led by Manuela Martelli, Ana Marija Veselčić, and Filip đurić, and also Features Mauro Ercegović Gracin, and Nikša Butijer. “Her arrival has a significant impact on the dynamics between the community members and brings with it turmoil and inspiration to other women,” especially Milena.
The co-production between Croatia, Italy, Romania, Greece, France, and Slovenia had its world premiere at the recent Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Martelli and Veselčić Best in Competition awards. It moved on to the competition lineup at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival , where it generated even more buzz.
God Will Not Help producer Ankica Jurić Tilić and the Group of co-producers Features Cinematography by Jana Pleanaš, editing by Jan Klemsche, costumes by Katarina Pilić, Production Design
by Laura Boniand and music by Stavros Evangelou, Iris Asimakopoulou and Vasilis Reia.
"I wanted to explore what true human solidarity and empathy could mean within the framework of rigid value systems driven by the feverish desire to belong or possess," according to a director's note.
At the Sarajevo festival, Jušić spoke to Thr about featuring female characters and prominent religion, God Won't Help, how the film's sheep affected his filming schedule, and what the author plans to do next.
Stop looking at my plate and God won't help They have different configurations, but they share some Chave themes, right?
Yes, some of the voices may be similar. And I think the similarities are primarily in the characters and the character development, because in both, I have female characters who are marginalized from their society. Their family and everyone else act like a pack of wolves, trying to separate them.
In Stop Staring at My Plate, the ending didn't free my character, and it bothered me for many years that she left this character in a toxic environment. So, God won't help . I decided to do something different.
Totas, God won't help in the mountains. How good and difficult was it to shoot in the wild?
Fortunately, we didn't sleep in the mountains. There's a town near where we went every night. But it was a bit difficult to shoot, I won't try to diminish that. I really wanted nature to be an important aspect of the film, and I wanted everyone to be immersed in it. But nature is nature, and a mountain is a mountain. We're just tiny particles on this big mountain. And at times, I really felt like we were intruders. You can't feel like you're an intruder there, with all the cars and all of us there, and you have this beautiful world around us. And I wanted, in the viewing experience, for this nature to engage you as a viewer, yes.
It's about society and nature, like in the West, where you have nature and people who build society, but in fact this society brings more chaos and violence.
How early did you know that your protagonist would be a Chilean woman, like actress
Manuela Martelli, and why did you want her to be a foreigner?
I knew from the beginning because I saw Manuela in a short stay, Valparaíso by Carlo Sironi, and I really liked it. Croatia also has a strong immigration to Chile, so I thought this could be used.
Tell me a little about why you like to feature strong female characters.
This element of the female rebel is very important to me. I really wanted to show not only these women struggling, but also [perform] these small acts of rebellion. I like, for example, that Milena is lazy and doesn't want to do anything at home, and everyone says she's very lazy. But this laziness is her small act of rebellion. This is something I really like. And in the end, I wanted to give them a big rebellion.
Looking at your employees and staff, you also have a strong female creative team behind the camera. How do you know them or how did you find them?
It's great because my DOP and I, and also my costume designer and my editor, who is a man, have worked together since we were students. We made all the shorts that came together, and Stop Looking at My Plate and now this one. And Ankica, the producer, also produced Stop Looking at My Plate . So we're mostly women and we always work together, and we're the core of the film.
Tell us a little about the religious aspect of the film. Why is religion one of the main themes? Does this have anything to do with your homeland, Croatia?
Croatia has this strong far-right movement now that's growing and is deeply intertwined with the Church and the Catholic religion. The Church is very politically inclined. Priests often talk about politics. For me, this is a big problem there. We had this Croatian Nazi regime. And now this movement is intertwined with the Church. It's scary.
So I wanted to address this false religion in a way that some of the characters in the film represent. But I also wanted to address this spirituality, this more individual and intimate spirituality, in the character of Ilija (đurić).
The two main female characters in God Won't Help don't speak the same language, so Teresa learns the language of her new surroundings, which leads to all sorts of interesting scenes. Noam Chomsky and others have written about the role language plays in our understanding of the world. Why did you want to focus on this language?
I wanted Teresa to learn some words that would help her tell him a secret. Besides, this world they live in is very simple. You mentioned Chomsky. Their world is their sheep, the mountain, and there's the knife: it's all the useful things and objects around them. So I wanted her to learn about their world through words for very concrete things. The shepherd's life is very concrete.
Since you mentioned the sheep, how did all the sheep affect your filming?
When we shot, we'd have one shot, and if that wasn't good, we'd have to do another sortie, and we had to put all the sheep back in the same position. So people would run after the sheep, trying to get them in the same position for the shot. So, it took a long time to stage the sheep. And we ended up doing seven shots a day instead of the 15 we had planned. Overall, we filmed for 36 days. The 'God Won't Help' crew at the Sarajevo Film Festival .
The music in the film isn't the music of shepherds, but rather a burning, more industrial sound. What was the thinking behind this?
My editor, Jan, who's also a music editor, and I were talking, and I really didn't want to have the music typical of the area and the era, like Shepherd's music. We wanted to add another layer with music, music that underscores the emotion. We just wanted to have scenes where the music is overwhelming in some way, and our reference was mainly [the band] Tangerine Dream from the '70s.
So we were trying to find someone who makes this kind of music today. And since we're a Greek co-production, we looked for Greek composers. Then Jan went online and looked at small labels, clubs, and asked everyone in Greece. And then we met Stavros and Iris, and Vasilis, who are the composers. Our collaboration was truly perfect. We never met beyond Zoom, but they were incredible.
Do you already have an idea for your next film?
Yes, because it took nine years between Stop Looking at My Plate and this film. I'd really like to make another film a little faster. I already have an idea. I'd like to make a film about an actress who's a really bad actress and tries really hard. This idea has stayed with me for a while, and I'll try to write it.
Where did this idea come from?
I'm always obsessed with actors because acting is so connected to you. I mean, we all have jobs, but acting is really about you giving your body, your voice, your face, your everything, to do your job. And I've always wondered if actors who aren't good are aware that they're not good. Do you feel it in your body? Do you go to work every day thinking, "Okay, I was really bad today"? How painful is it? I think actors are very vulnerable. And this vulnerability is interesting to me. It won't help.
Is there anything else you would like to mention or highlight?
My costume designer told me yesterday, " God won't help. " It's a costume film, but no one mentions costumes when they write about this film. So he just wanted to tell us that—these clothes were extremely important. Especially in Croatia, in every period film, everyone always seems to be in brand-new clothes that came straight from the museum. And I really wanted to dirty them up, so that their costumes looked really worn for time. It was very important for us to achieve this authenticity. While I was writing the script and preparing the film, I thought, "If their clothes look brand-new, everything will be completely amazing."
Teresa's black dress is quite memorable...
This dress was also one of my initial reasons for writing the script. It was this woman in a black dress, because I'm a big fan of gothic novels and things like that.
