Ivana Todorovic

I’m a social documentary filmmaker from Belgrade, Serbia. My films are character driven and are informed by personal experiences of human instincts and modes of survival when dealing with trauma.

Up until now, my films have dealt with themes of gender and sexuality, homelessness, the education of Roma children living in squatter settlements in Belgrade and youth gun violence in New York City.

At the Saari Residence, I want to deal with the theme of incest through writing my scenario for docu-fiction film. I want to take the audience on a journey with a person coping with the trauma of incest in a traditional society, a society based on strong familial bonds, as the Serbian society is.

Through three key points in a life of an incest survivor, the film will examine what changes in a child’s perception of herself and world around her when the abuse happens; when a girl has a ‘revelation’ and admits to herself what happened to her in childhood and the way she is able to cope with it and when a woman decides to address this issue with her family and open a dialog.

The film will be divided in chapters. Narrator will be a 35 old woman, Marija, returning to Belgrade after living abroad. She returns home with a camera, hoping to open a dialog with her family.

The visual style of the film will be primarily through visual and auditory experience, rather than from dialogs.

The film deals with condition of silence and inability to openly talk about pain in a family closed for communication and a society that is unsympathetic to trauma.