Oaza
Oasis

As a film student, I had the opportunity to visit one of these institutions and do some documentary work there. What I found is a love triangle with a melodramatic plot between a male resident and two of the female residents, which almost had a fatal ending. This story surpassed the possibilities and limits of the documentary I was filming at that moment, but became the core inspiration for this film. [...] The film was shot in real locations at an existing institution and actual residents found there played the main characters. The "actors" went through a workshop where they were slowly introduced to the characters they are to play, while the script was adapted to the real characters of the participants. In that way the film has authenticity and the participants were not forced into a situation which is not close to their characteristics in real life. During my earlier experience, while performing a documentary shoot in the institution, I gained the trust of the residents to share their world of honest and intense emotion with me. In me, they found a mediator, a way to channel their honest cry to the world, a world which does not understand them, and has no desire to. I have taken a vow that their cry will, somehow, be heard.

Ivan Ikić (Belgrade, 1982) studied film and television directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at the University of Arts in Belgrade. He attended both the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Berlinale Dox Clinic in 2008. He is the director of the feature film Barbarians, which won the Special Jury Prize at Karlovy Vary IFF and numerous other awards at over 35 international festivals. In 2016, he was one of six directors selected for Cannes' Cinefondation Residence, where he developed Oasis.