Katarina Mitrović, Isidora Veselinović, Vladimir Tagić
WONDERFUL
Dissatisfied with the way her life has turned out, a woman starts waking up on the mornings when she made some of the key decisions that shaped it. She takes alternate paths towards different lives that could have been.
SYNOPSIS
Divna Majstorović, a forty-five-year-old Serbian language teacher, lives a boring life in a provincial town. She is likeable but neglected, stuck in her repetitive family routine. Her husband Mića works mostly night shifts, and her two children go to elementary school. Debts are piling up, as are issues with the children, yet Divna is most troubled by the fact that she has not had sex in two years. After extensive preparations, Divna attempts to seduce her colleague from work. The attempt is extremely unsuccessful. She lies down next to Mića and asks herself if her life would have been different if she had left him twenty years ago. When she wakes up, Mića is still next to her, but they are in a dorm room, twenty years younger. Immediately, she breaks up with Mića, who is shocked. Divna doesn't even know why she’s doing this, nor can she explain it—she just has a gut feeling that it’s the right thing to do. We see how Divna's life turns out differently after this break-up: she is forty-five again, but with no family. She is a well-known writer and has seemingly lived a fulfilled life. However, she has hemorrhoids, sleeps in a car, and her relationship with a younger man quickly ends, since she can't keep up with him. She soon realises she has made a big mistake. Had she taken life more seriously when she was young, she would not be in this situation. And indeed, in the next version of Divna's life, she succeeds in doing so. She is successful, has a good job, an attractive husband and a smart son. But is everything really like that or does this life also have hidden problems? Through different versions of Divna's life, we see how individual choices transform not only our own destinies, but also the destinies of the people we love. Is it possible to live a "perfect life"?
CREATORS
Katarina Mitrović, Isidora Veselinović, Vladimir Tagić
PRODUCER
Marija Stojanović
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Sense Production
COUNTRY
Serbia
FORMAT
45' x 6
GENRE
Dramedy
Katarina Mitrović
Katarina Mitrović is a screenwriter and a novelist from Belgrade. Her screen credits include the hit drama series CHILDREN OF EVIL (2023), which premiered on HBO MAX and is sold worldwide by Beta Film; THE GROUP (2019), which was broadcast on Radio-Television Serbia RTS and is sold worldwide by Keshet; and MOM AND DAD ARE PLAYING WAR GAMES (2020, RTS). The latter shows won FEDIS Best Screenplay Awards. Mitrović also adapted the screenplays for two episodes of BAD BLOOD (2021 / RTS). She co-wrote the short film ONE WHO BRINGS THE RAIN (2020), which marked her first collaboration with Isidora Veselinovic. She studied Serbian literature and language in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade and is currently a graduate student in the Department of Dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She has published two books of poetry: “The Womb” (Matica srpska, 2017) and “While I Wait for It to Pass” (“Karlo Bijelicki,” City Library, 2018), as well as the verse novel “Not All Houses Have a Yard” (P.P.M. Enklava, 2020). Based on this latter book, Mitrović, Isidora Veselinović, and Marija Stojanović are developing a feature-length film. Mitrović’s most recent novel, “All Good Barbies,” hit bookstores last year. There is a now a stage play based on the book, and a film version, to be written by Mitrović, is in the early development stage.
Isidora Veselinović
Isidora Veselinović is an emerging talent who has directed several short films, including UNTIL ROAD DO US PART (2015) and THE ONE WHO BRINGS THE RAIN (2020). She is one of the most prominent casting directors in Southeast Europe, with significant experience as a second assistant director and script supervisor. She holds an MA in film and television directing from the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade. She is currently in post-production with her new short film, BLUEBERRIES, and is in development with her debut feature-length film, NOT ALL HOUSES HAVE A YARD, based on the novel by Katarina Mitrović, who is also the writer of WONDERFUL.
Vladimir Tagić
Vladimir Tagić is the co-creator, screenwriter, and director of the hit series OPERATION SABRE, which had its premiere at Canneseries in 2024, when it won the Best Ensemble Award. Tagić also co-created and wrote the thirty-nine-episode drama series MORNING CHANGES EVERYTHING (2018) for Radio-Television Serbia RTS, for which he directed sixteen episodes. He co-wrote and directed five episodes of the drama series MOM AND DAD ARE PLAYING WAR GAMES (2020) and directed five episodes of CHILDREN OF EVIL, which premiered on HBO MAX in 2023. His short film EMERGENCY EXIT (2015) premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, was screened in the Acid programme at the Festival de Cannes, and won the award for best screenplay at the Filmschoolfest Munich. His debut feature-length film, YUGO FLORIDA, is awaiting its world premiere.
CREATOR’S STATEMENT
WONDERFUL deals with the question of the choices we make and how they determine the course of our lives. Is there anything we could have done differently? Is the life we're living right now actually the best we can do? The idea for this story came from the ever-present dissatisfaction with life that each of us has, and the need to look into the past, analyse our lives, reconsider the decisions we made and where they took us, and wonder what would have happened if it had been different. Each episode brings a new choice, a new dilemma, a new parallel life the protagonist could have had. Divna's different lives will always be in the domain of her character, interests, and talents. Thus, each new life is not random; rather, it is in some way connected to the previous one, as well as to the nature of the main character. In relation to the characteristics that a certain world has, some of Divna's characteristics will be more or less pronounced. Also, there will be constants—Divna has asthma, often behaves unconventionally, and has a strong sense of humour. Her parents and sister are always present, but Divna does not have the same relationship with them in every life. At no point is Divna aware that she is travelling through different lives, but she does occasionally feel that she is experiencing déjà vu. This happens when she meets characters who were important to her in other lives, but who are not part of her world now. Divna has the strange feeling that she has met them before, but she isn’t able to remember where. Such relationships represent the connecting tissue of the series in which, regardless of the fact that (almost) every episode is a new life, the characters are part of the same universe, in which each separate world has a glimpse of a previous or future life.
Marija Stojanović
Marija Stojanović is a producer based in Belgrade, and is a co-owner of Sense Production, where she produces and develops fiction projects. She produced Ivan Ikic’s feature-length fiction film OASIS, which had its premiere in the Giornate degli Autori programme at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, when it won the Europa Cinemas Label Award. It went on to travel to the FilmFestival Cottbus and the Moscow and Pingyao International Film Festivals, among other venues, and has won seventeen awards to date. Stojanović latest achievement is the Krzysztof Kieslowski Script Award-winning dramedy FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE, a six-country co-production by Montenegrin director Ivan Marinović that premiered in competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2023. The film had 55,000 domestic admissions and is currently travelling the world. Stojanović line produced Radivoje Andrić’s hit family film HOW I LEARNED TO FLY, which is based on a best-selling children’s book and grossed 200,000 domestic admissions.
PRODUCER’S STATEMENT
With WONDERFUL, we are telling a story with the familiar premise of revisiting the key choices we make in life and the second chances we all crave. We all have a defining moment or two in our lives we wish we could go back to in order to choose a different path forward. The setting, which combines the Balkan mentality with the cosmopolitan feel of Belgrade, adds depth to the premise, as its social circumstances (patriarchy, politics, etc.) provide crazy obstacles as well as a source of dark humour to the character’s journey. It’s like FLEABAG by Phoebe Waller-Bridge meets THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD by Joachim Trier meets Balkan trumpets. These are stories with a strong political and/or social relevance told through authentic, familiar, yet quirky characters set in an almost magical but painfully real world: the Balkans, a barrel of gunpowder. The genre of the show is determined by the need to catch life in its full multilayered-ness and complexity. Dramedy allows for an auto-ironic attitude, which the characters have towards dramatic and difficult situations in life. The humour mostly comes from Divna’s character—she is infantile, messy, and always out of touch with her surroundings. Her imperfections make her extremely relatable and she should be a mirror for the audience to bounce back from and a motivation to see their own lives through a new prism. To date, the project has received support from Creative Europe MEDIA, with which we have been able to develop the entire storyline, six synopses, and a script for the first episode. We have pitched the project to Serbian Public television RTS, as well as to United Media, and are in negotiations. We plan to shoot the series in 2026.
Production company profile
Sense Production is a trio of EAVE producers: Maja Popovic, Marija Stojanovic and Milan Stojanovic. It is best known for films such as the family hit HOW I LEARNED TO FLY (2022 / 220,000 admissions / ECFA Award BUFF Malmo / Locarno FF) by Radivoje Adric, and the award-winning films by Ivan Ikic: OASIS (2020 / Best European Film, Venice Days / Best Film, Zagreb FF / Best Film, FEST Belgrade) and BARBARIANS (2014 / Special Mention, Karlovy Vary IFF / Seyfi Teoman Award, European Film Festival Palic / Best Film, Crossing Europe Linz).
Where are we at?
ESTIMATED PRODUCTION BUDGET FOR THE FIRST SEASON
1.200.000 €
FINANCING IN PLACE
55.000 €
Production timeline
February - November 2025
Updating existing creative materials
December - March 2026
Script development - pre final version of the script
April and May 2026
Finalizing co-production and broadcaster agreements
June 2026 - October 2026
Defining crew
Casting
Location Scouting
November 2026
Shooting prep
Final Draft/Final Budget
Completion of crew and cast
End of November / beginning of December 2026
Shooting starts
February – July 2027
Editing
Sound and Picture post
Mastering