PRODUCTION NOTES
In fitting with its nationally non-specific story, the film’s creative team came from all over the world. The lead cast came from Romania, the United Kingdom, and Albania, with supporting cast from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. Our production team joined us from the United States, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey, Germany, and France. This international group of filmmakers found themselves in Nova Varos, a small, multi-ethnic mountain town in southwestern Serbia, where along with the local townspeople, we lived and worked for two months.
It was a fascinating and troubling experience to make a fiction film about war alongside so many people who had recently experienced conflict first hand. One cast member had lost an arm to a NATO bomb not far from our shooting locations; another had lost a cousin to a landmine in the Democratic Republic of Congo; one of our crew had developed childhood cancer from the stress of life during wartime in Croatia. These personal experiences were instrumental in inspiring common cause and solidarity during our shoot. Each cast and crew member, regardless of nationality, was able to identify and engage deeply with the universal themes and experiences in the film’s narrative, in part because of the personal relationships developed during production. By the end of the shoot, many long term friendships had been created among people between whom there had formerly been a vague mistrust. This is also an important accomplishment of the film, and the production team’s greatest source of pride.