Venice-Bound Serbian Protest Drama ‘Until the Day Ends’ Boarded by Heretic (EXCLUSIVE)

Heretic has acquired world rights to Jelena Maksimović’s fiction feature debut “Until the Day Ends,” set against the backdrop of Serbia’s student protests. The film will celebrate its world premiere as part of Venice’s Horizons section in September.

The film follows Lena (Lena Trifunović), an anarchist student active in Belgrade’s anti-government movement, and Stefan (Stefan Tarabić), a working-class youth who finds himself, almost by chance, among pro-government loyalists.

Standing on opposite sides of the protests, the pair fall for each other despite the divide, recognizing in one another a restlessness neither can quite name. When a stone is thrown and a policeman struck, Stefan fears he is to blame, and the two flee together to a remote cabin, far from the turmoil of the city.

The film is set against Serbia’s largest student protests in decades, among the largest in Europe, which erupted after the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad killed 16 people. Maksimović drew on personal experience for the story, having grown up in Zemun, a municipality of Belgrade.

“In 2021, while mentoring a workshop, I met a girl called Lena whose presence awakened vivid memories of my own adolescence,” Maksimović said. “Through her, I caught a glimpse of how my younger self might look and think today. She inspired the fictional character of Lena in this film. Standing on opposite sides of the protests, she and Stefan navigate ideological and intimate conflict in a fractured post-Yugoslav society. Blending conventions of melodrama, comedy, crime and road movie, the film forms an elliptical coming-of-age portrait of adolescence and resistance.”

Maksimović wrote the screenplay together with Olga Dimitrijević and Ivan Salatić. Paul Spengemann, from Germany, is director of photography with Jan Klemsche as editor and Vladimir Živković as sound designer. The cast is led by Lena Trifunović, Andrija Krivokapić, Irina Hotomski, Stefan Tarabić, Nataša Čakardić and Miodrag Dragičević, and is composed primarily of non-professional actors, with the exception of Dragičević playing Lena’s brother.

Ioanna, head of sales at Heretic, commented: “‘Until the Day Ends’ immediately stood out for the confidence of its filmmaking and the emotional depth of its storytelling. Jelena Maksimović has a distinctive voice that feels both authentic and cinematic, and we’re proud to accompany the film as it begins its international journey in Venice.”

Jelena Angelovski produces for Serbia’s Taurunum Film. The film is co-produced by Nikolay Mutafchiev for Bulgaria’s PREMIERstudio Plus, Miha Černec and Jožko Rutar for Slovenia’s Staragara, Arda Çiltepe and Steffen Goldkamp for Germany’s Kelek Film, Dušan Kasalica and Ivan Salatić for Montenegro’s Meander Film, and Tena Gojić for Croatia’s Dinaridi Film.

The project was developed through TorinoFilmLab, When East Meets West and Les Arcs Work in Progress, and is backed by Film Center Serbia, the Bulgarian National Film Center, the Slovenian Film Centre, Creative Europe – MEDIA, MOIN Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and the UNIQA SEE FUTURE Foundation through the Female Filmmakers Support Programme (FFSP).