Iva Radivojevic’s 1992-Set Forced Migration Story ‘When the Phone Rang’ Is as Relevant Today as Ever: ‘This Kind of Displacement Is Happening Everywhere’
variety.comIva Radivojević‘s second narrative feature, “When the Phone Rang“(2024), presented in the Locarno Film Festival‘s Concorso Cineasti del Presente section.
And a self-hypnosis it is; the call marks a double trauma for Lana as she simultaneously loses her grandfather and country. Thrust into an extended state of dislocation, Lana experiences a fragmentation of her memories and history.
To counter the effects of migration, she obsessively loops back to the phone call to hold fast to what she knows to be true — at a point when she must quickly grow accustomed to her national identity and home being confronted and renegotiated.
The result is a film that is equal parts travelogue and reconstruction of a memory, one that refuses exceptionalism in favor of an amorphous form that seeks to commune across geographical boundaries.
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