It is a story about a Chilean woman, Teresa, who arrives in a village at the foot of the Dinara mountain, carrying a bag containing the bones of her late husband and looking for his Croatian family in order to bury him. She meets her husband’s sister and brothers and starts to find her way around the village and the family. Yet, things are not exactly what they seem. And neither is Teresa… 

The film’s producer is Ankica Jurić Tilić, and in addition to the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, the film’s development is supported by RE-ACT, supporting Croatian-Slovenian-Italian co-productions. Production company Kinorama from Zagreb is developing the film in collaboration with Slovenian production house Gustav Film and TICO Film Company from Italy.   

The ScriptLab workshop is intended for debut and second fiction feature films. The programme consists of three one-week workshops and two online sessions.  

The first workshop will be held 19th–25th March in Lviv, in west Ukraine, the second 22nd–29th June in Helsinki, Finland, while the third session will take place at the TorinoFilmLab Meeting, held 16th–21st November. There, the workshop participants will have a chance to present their projects to an international audience of producers, agents and other film professional, and participate in one-on-one meetings with key industry figures. 

“The ScriptLab 2020 selection is exciting and diverse. Projects deal with topics such as contemporary identities, families, history, social and environmental issues, whilst offering original interpretations of genres and questioning forms and formats. We are happy that our selection this year mostly presents female writer & director projects, hopefully announcing a new era in our industry,” said TorinoFilmLab Curator Amra Bakšić Čamo, as selected projects were announced. 

The authors will work on their projects with the assistance of a series of professionals: screenwriters Philippe Barrière from France and Rasmus Horskjær from Denmark, story editors Franz Rodenkirchen and Françoise von Roy from Germany, and director, screenwriter and story editor Maria Solrun from Iceland.  

Last year, Croatian director and film editor Dubravka Turić participated in the same workshop with her feature film project, Rhino. 

You can find out more about TorinoFilmLab on the following link, and about the ScriptLab workshop here. 

Award-winning director Hana Jušić’s latest project was recently also selected for the Cannes Cinéfondation residence, held in Paris from 2nd March until the middle of July.   

Titular photograph: scene from God Will Not Help; Hana Jušić
(*first photograph by Jana Plećaš)