

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
Trailer
Press
"There’s something incredibly daring and defiant in the way it spreads out." HIGH ON FILMS
“Daring and unorthodox, the film is a beautifully captivating humanistic odyssey that plays to several senses and creates something singularly unique.” INTERNATIONAL CINEPHILE SOCIETY
"The ultimate goal of spatial imagination, for the characters in the film, seems to be the fusion with the realized utopia." FATAMORGANA
"As we can see, a lot of the film focuses on expats in Bali, but there is no misery porn focusing on the locals to counterpoint it." CINEUROPA
"An unconventional structure and observant, non-interfering camera heighten the film’s existential and philosophical undertones, inviting viewers to engage deeply with the questions it poses, rather than providing easy answers." OBVIOUSLY REVIEWS
"It is not, moreover, a coincidence that the fragments of life brought to the screen are seven, like the 'frames' of Purgatory, and are preceded, similarly to Dante's canticle, by a prologue that acts as an 'anti-purgatory'." NONSOLO CINEMA