IVANA THE TERRIBLE

What happens when one invites one’s own friends and relatives to play themselves in an autobiographical feature film? Director Ivana Mladenović dares to do just that – personally occupying the role of thirty-something Ivana, a Bucharest-based actress with psychosomatic ailments who returns to her Serbian hometown of Kladovo seeking peace, quiet and an improvement to her health. Alas, on the train ride home Ivana already gets in a fight with an older female passenger who claims that yoga is an evil cult intent on corrupting young minds. In the 1970s, Tito and Ceaușescu teamed up to build a “friendship bridge” in humble Kladovo, but there is little trace of friendship left upon Ivana’s arrival: her father nags, grandma screams, Ivana is worried that her affair with the 21-year-old neighbour boy will be discovered and her whole family fails to take her film career or her physical afflictions seriously. Absurdly comical generational conflicts abound throughout the film, coming to a head when none other than Ivana “the Terrible” is selected by Kladovo’s city government to serve as poster girl for their annual festival of Romanian-Serbian friendship.