Yugo Florida TV series veteran Vladimir Tagić makes his directorial debut, which celebrated its world premiere during the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival. This ends on Friday.
The title of the father-row drama refers to a car model, which mirrors the condition of its protagonist. Just check out the synopsis: "Zoran's awkward, near-pointless life features a marijuana-fueled roommate, an unavailable ex-girlfriend, and a job in front-line television when his intolerable father is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and Zoran vows to help him through his final weeks."
Tagić wrote the script with Milan Ramšak Marković. The cast features popular Serbian television comedian Andrija Kuzmanović, Nikola Pejaković, Snježana Sinovčić Šiškov and Goran Slavić.
The Serbian director sat down with Thr in Sarajevo to discuss the inspirations for the film, car and TV references, and his next film idea.
Going from television to film wasn't a huge leap for Tagić. "Movies are what I always wanted to do," he shared. "I just needed a lot of time to finance the film. It's not that easy, especially when you're a first-time director, to find funding. That's why I jumped at the chance to work on TV shows when I had the opportunity."
His own experiences inspired the film. “A year before my father was sick and died, an uncle of mine was sick, and I went to the hospital to visit him, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m not ready for my parents to get sick,’” he recalled. “And then, three or four months later, my father was sick. And for the last six months of his life, I experienced the strongest feelings I’ve ever experienced.”
The filmmaker continues: “His whole world is upside down, and you have this illusion in your head that you might be learning something about life. That's how our brains work. We want to make sense of everything. We want him to be my boyfriend, or that I've gotten better, or that I'm a boy.”
Tagić realized he'd never seen a film confront this "idea that a painful experience doesn't mean it's a learning experience. Maybe it's just pain and there's no problem accepting it." The director explained: "Zoran is this guy who's looking for a way to change his life, to find meaning. He's saying [at one point in the film]: 'I'm more mature now.' But in the end, he realizes that's not really it."
Making Yugo Florida helped the creator. “That was something I had to do to get going,” he noted. “This was my kind of catharsis. I think this process helped me let go and move on with my life. This experience was cathartic for me in a way, because I’m not a psychotherapy type of guy.”
'Florida Yoke'
Courtesy of the Sarajevo Film Festival
So what's with the title? Yugo Florida ? It turns out this is the name of a hatchback car model by the Yugoslavian automaker Zastava that was produced from 1987 to 2008. “The car has such an exotic name,” Tagić said. “In this name, you’re putting Yugoslavia and Florida right next to each other, and it’s a strange combination. What is Yugo Florida? That name was really funny to me. It’s absurd because it looks exotic, but it’s the most expensive car in the world.”
You might want to draw inspiration from the sunny beaches of Florida and the heat of Miami, "but essentially, it's the coolest car in the world," he concluded. "So, for me, this was the perfect metaphor for my main characters and their lives. Their lives are full of imperfections, full of things they don't understand and problems they can't fix, and they don't know why. And that car is like that."
Zoran's reality TV work is a reference to the filmmaker's personal life. "This was the job I did right after finishing film school," Tagić told Thr . "I was making Big Brother reality. And those long night shifts, which you see in the film, drove me completely crazy. I was in some perpetual state of insomnia," just like Zoran.
“His main problem is loneliness,” the director continued. “And Paul Schrader, the famous screenwriter I really admire, says that what a job in a movie represents, and how when he’s writing a character, he’s thinking of the job he’s doing as a metaphor for that character’s internal problem. Taxi Driver or American Gigolo or First Reformed . So, I was thinking about the perfect job to represent the loneliness of a main character, and then it just clicked—it’s perfect to have a guy who’s looking at other people, even when they’re sleeping, in black and white.”
Tagić already has a new film and a script idea with his Yugo Florida writing partner. “It’s a story that’s, in a way, a mirror to this story,” said Thr . “This story was about my relationship with my father, and the next one will be about the relationship between my mother and my sister. So I’ll be doing the female version of Yugo Florida. I mean, it’ll be a completely different film, but in my head it’s like a duo. There’s a kind of connection.”
