Herceg Novi Grand Prix Goes to "Our Father"
At the 39th Herceg Novi festival awards, Goran Stankovic's Our Father won the Grand Prix, while Perovic and Arsenijevic used the stage to recall Dragan Micanovic's censored speech.
When Goran Stankovic stepped onto the stage at the Kanli Kula fortress to read out a message from an actor who was not even in the room that evening, the audience already knew who the thank-you was for. Vucic Perovic, who won the Golden Mimosa for best actor for his role in “Our Father,” could not attend because of private obligations, so the film’s director read his message from the stage. Before dedicating the award to his colleague Dragan Micanovic, Perovic used it to explain what his roots in Kotor mean to him: “Being a true Bokelj means not belonging to any side that divides us along national or religious lines.” The line sounded like a personal note in a biography, but in a hall that had watched a speech get banned just a week earlier, it landed as a statement.
The 39th Herceg Novi Film Festival, also known as the Montenegro Film Festival, ran from August 22 to 28 and closed on its final evening with the awards ceremony at Kanli Kula, followed by an out-of-competition screening of the documentary “Mountain” by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazic. The top prize, the Grand Prix, went to “Our Father,” the debut feature by director Goran Stankovic, who also picked up the directing award that night, shared with Kosara Mitic for “17.” Perovic took the Golden Mimosa for best actor, and the film also won the FEDEORA film critics’ jury award.
“Our Father” is Stankovic’s debut feature, built around a real event that the jury described as a serious, precisely directed film about a difficult subject, carried by a strong ensemble cast. Winning the directing award for that first feature the same night, against more experienced names in the running, was no small feat.
What turned that night in Herceg Novi into a story of its own was not the number of trophies, but what the winners said when they picked them up. A week earlier, Dragan Micanovic had been stopped from delivering his opening-night speech, in which he criticized Serbia’s government and argued for freedom of artistic expression, a decision the ministry defended at the time, as we reported then. At the closing ceremony, that speech was heard after all, just from someone else’s mouth. Screenwriter Vladimir Arsenijevic, who won the Golden Mimosa for best screenplay for “Three Weeks After,” an award he shared with Miha Hocevar and Srdjan Koljevic, writers of “Hidden People,” quoted from the stage the exact part of the speech Micanovic had not been allowed to deliver: “What is happening to us here now can happen to you there tomorrow.” In a hall that had just applauded Perovic’s dedication, the line was no longer just a quote, it was a repeat of the very thing an institution had tried to silence.
Arsenijevic explained his own award without sentimentality, describing the road “Three Weeks After” had traveled to reach audiences:
“Now, after the premiere in Karlovy Vary, screenings in Pula, Sarajevo and finally here in Herceg Novi, one thing is clear: our film is finding its way into the hearts of audiences, and however dark the subject it deals with, it is more relevant than ever.”
The context behind that line says more than the line itself. The film follows a minor’s suicide after peer bullying, a subject that rarely gets this many festival stops, and yet, as Arsenijevic showed by quoting Micanovic, it keeps reaching audiences who recognize it as their own.
The festival did not stay confined to the stage and the trophies even at its close. As part of the program, WeBalkans organized the “EU with You” panel on film education and regional cooperation, with Montenegrin director Ivan Salatic among the participants. He described regional co-production as close to mandatory for any serious film made in this part of Europe: “Every serious film in this region has to be a co-production.” Said outside the formal ceremony, the line actually explains how “Our Father” got here in the first place: the Creative Europe program has 2.44 billion euros set aside for exactly this kind of cooperation for the 2021 to 2027 period, and without it, most films in this year’s selection, including the winner, would have struggled to find a budget at all.
The Golden Mimosa for best actress went to Snjezana Sinovcic Siskov for “Koke,” while the best student film award went to Adem Tutic, a student at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, for the short film “Tarik.” Overshadowed by the bigger drama around Micanovic, those two awards are easy to miss, yet they show the festival is still doing its basic job: opening space for the generation coming up next.
By trophy count, “Our Father” was the biggest winner of the night, but the most striking moment was not the announcement of the Grand Prix. It was the minute in which one absent actor, through someone else’s voice, and one present screenwriter, through his own, said what the actor who was supposed to open the festival had not been allowed to say. When an award becomes the occasion for reading out a banned speech, it stops being just a recognition for a role and becomes part of the text someone tried to erase.
