RIDM 2024: When the Phone Rang (dir. Iva Radivojević) | Review

The 27th Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) is presenting a retrospective of Iva Radivojević’s filmography including her short films, documentaries, and hybrid feature films, on the occasion of the North American Premiere of her latest film, When The Phone Rang. Born in Belgrade, the retrospective titled Imaginary Landscapes of Dislocation appropriately describes Radivojević’s filmography from her early shorts taking place in Morocco to her relocated home in Cyprus. After living in the US in her adulthood, but now living in Greece, Radivojević’s cinema uses memory and space to evoke feelings of places in time where one’s past leaves subtle, yet formative impressions. When The Phone Rang, which had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival which won a Special Mention prize in the Filmmakers of the Present section, displays this experience through repetition of a phone call that rang at 10:36 in the morning on a Friday. Radivojević uses this structure as a way of reawakening memories of displacement, geopolitics, and coming-of-age for a girl in a state of distress and uncertainty.

Opening with a narrator announcing the first “When the phone rang it was Friday”, the setting is 1992, in a country that no longer exists. The country, Yugoslavia, now modern-day Serbia, is never mentioned throughout the film. For the film’s protagonist’s Lana, an 11-year-old girl does not realize the severity of her country and its civil war, but what Radivojević is interested in is capturing her memories in this place and time. The telephone is the main device that acts as a conduit of communication, surveillance, and most importantly, recalling memories.

Radivojević’s introduces Lana’s family, friends, and living situations through elliptical vignettes, starting with the “When the phone rang it was Friday”. Through Radivojević’s set and custom design, she transports us to the 1990s by shooting on 16mm giving its nostalgic touch, while colorful sweatsuits, CRT televisions, vintage suitcases, and landline telephones give the timely look. Like our memories, we may not remember everything linearly, but only specific details we choose to hold on to. For Lana, it could be the upstairs neighbor who sniffs glue, the one friend who she plays classical piano for, or a first love. Radivojević captures the blurry details of memories through a strange, almost dreamlike lens.
While the memories show Lana’s personal experience, Radivojević does not stray away from the political repercussions and its cascading effects on the family. Lana’s grandfather, a colonel and her father who’s ties with mafia bring tension and threats, but from Lana’s perspective, a mere afterthought. Radivojević inserts archival images of families intermittently, and it is hard not to think that that could be Radivojević’s integrating her fiction with the non-fiction to induce a layer of intimacy within its narrative. While rarely showing the faces of the parents in the narrative, Radivojević fills in the gaps with archival images, brilliantly weaving in and out between the narrative and real life.

It makes sense that this “fiction” film is being showcased at a documentary film festival as the narrative is heavily influenced by Radivojević’s upbringing. It’s a film where memory meets the retrospective’s theme of “Imaginary Landscapes of Dislocation”. Like all Radivojević’s films, Lana’s memories can be read as imaginary landscapes, where the events shown provide various textures of emotions such as companionship, grief, joy, and introspection. These memories are caused by the dislocation throughout her formative years as a child, fracturing one’s relationship with home and identity. Ultimately, the film’s brilliant thesis comes to play on a universal level, especially today. Radivojević’s memory driven film is thematically present on displacement in both space (country) and mind (coming-of-age).

The 27th RIDM is taking over Montreal, Canada, from November 20th to December 1st.