Director: Mladen Kovačević

2024 / Serbia, Sweden / 75'

POSSIBILITY OF PARADISE

Synopsis

Schoolkids living on the top of the paradise island wait for the rain to stop. A former advertising executive is closing a land deal for her new villa. An entrepreneur battles nature while building a resort in the jungle. A veterinarian works cleaning snakes from the gardens of the foreigners. An influencer, disillusioned with love, recovers from losing everything overnight. A father and son prepare to leave for good, not knowing where. A dancer adopts a new identity, distancing herself from everything she’s ever known. Divers venture into uncharted waters, risking their lives for the challenge of conquest.

The tensions between life's possibilities revolve around the question of what life one should be living, with every decision leading to a different version of oneself. And while the earthly paradise might be nothing more than an ideal of imagination, humanity's relentless pursuit for happiness persists.

Venice International Film Festival 2024, Giornate Degli Autori – WORLD PREMIERE

Autor's Film Festival 2024, International Competition – NATIONAL PREMIERE

Through the simplicity of realism, Possibility of Paradise attempts to evade forced meanings, allowing the direct experience of the character's lives to prevail, each narrative fragment a new possibility. I drew subtle inspiration from the verse "And now the little vessel of my mind, sets sail across the better waves, leaving a sea of cruelty behind" from Dante's Purgatory, and the film's setting is deliberately reminiscent of the Dante's hilly island with the Garden of Eden on its summit. However, adorned with palm trees and occupied by foreigners, the paradise setting resonates colonial imagery; the old quest for God, gold, and glory has now become a quest for happiness. This is where film's protagonists have come to seek a good life, outside of familiar societies and ideologies, far removed from all they have ever known.

Director's statement
Credits

FORMAT: Feature-length documentary film

LANGUAGE: Serbian, English, Indonesian, Balinese, Russian

SUBTITLES AVAILABLE: English, Italian

LENGTH: 75 minutes

COUNTRIES OF PRODUCTION: Serbia, Sweden

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Horopter Film Production / www.horopter.rs

CO-PRODUCERS MDEMC: Produktion AB

SUPPORTED BY: Film Centre Serbia, Republic of Serbia – Ministry of Culture, and Swedish Film Institute

Film developed through EURODOC 2019

WRITER AND DIRECTOR: Mladen Kovačević

PRODUCERS: Iva Plemić Divjak, Mladen Kovačević

CO-PRODUCER: Elin Lilleman Eriksson

EDITOR: Jelena Maksimović

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Marko Milovanović

COMPOSER: Rebekka Karijord

SOUND RECORDING / COMPOSER / SOUND DESIGNER / RE-RECORDING MIXER: Jakov Munižaba

COMPOSER MANAGER: Jacob Snavely

Possibility of Paradise (2024) - IMDb

Trailer