Nađa Petrović
JELLYFISH LIVE FOREVER UNTIL THEY´RE CAUGHT
Introverted teen Sara believes she will share her sister’s fate and die on her nineteenth birthday. Diagnosed with an illness, and as visions of her sister return, Sara learns that freedom lies in facing pain rather than escaping it.
SYNOPSIS
We find Sara in what should be the most carefree time of her life, the summer between high school and college. She goes out with her friends to alternative clubs, tries to make up with her ex-boyfriend Viktor, drinks excessively, and wants to be noticed even though she is actually shy. Everything changes after Sara experiences a vision in the dark room of a club, which reminds her of the trauma she thought she had successfully repressed. She wakes up the next morning with a tingling in her arm. It spreads, and Sara discovers that she has an unnamed disease, which she will live with but that will stay with her forever. Panicked, Sara begins to fear death and matures rapidly. During her prep course to become a painter, she meets Balša, and becomes closer to her friend Tisa, both of whom faced death in the past and have buried trauma. Through her relationship with them, Sara faces her present, future and past – which contains a family tragedy that marked her entire upbringing, the sudden death of her sister Lara.
DIRECTOR
Nađa Petrović
PRODUCERS
Katarina Prpić, Danijel Pek
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Antitalent
COUNTRIES
Croatia, Serbia
Nađa Petrović
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Nađa Petrović was born in 1997 and graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. She is the author of two novels: That’s That (Samizdat B92, 2015) and Jellyfish Live Forever until They Are Caught (Geopoetika, 2023), which was shortlisted for the NIN Award, the Belgrade Victor Award, the Vladan Desnica and the Stevan Sremac awards, and won the Grozdana Olujić Prize for the best prose book of 2023. The novel is currently in its ninth edition. Her short stories have been published in the collections Stories from City Corners, Student Stories, and The Mokri(n) Knot. She directed the short fiction films You Probably Know What You’re Doing (which premiered at the Youth Film Festival in Sarajevo) and The Smell of Fresh Paint, which won the Heart of Sarajevo Award in 2024. Many short films have been made based on her scripts and they have screened at more than one hundred festivals around the world. The most successful are those directed by Nikola Stojanović, which have received awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival, the Les Arcs Festival, the Martovski Film Festival, and the Beldocs Film Festival. For the film Everything in Its Right Place, she won the award for Best Screenplay at the Bašta Fest in 2021. One of her short screenplays is currently in post-production: August, directed by Stojanović. The short film When It Dawns, based on her screenplay and directed by Stefan Ivančić, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2025. She worked in the writers room and wrote three episodes for the series Absolute 100 by Srdan Golubović and Ivan Knežević, which had its premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2025. Petrović also co-wrote the screenplays for the feature films Two Little Nightmares by director Nebojša Slijepčević, Selection by Bruno Anković, White Week by Bojan Vuletić, Before I Fall Asleep by Senka Domanović, Two-Thirds of One-Fifth by Vladimir Tagić, and Bodies by Golubović, all of which are currently in pre-production.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I want Sara to sink to the greatest abyss – fear, loneliness worse than death, hypochondria, anxiety – but then, in the next moment, rise above it and experience the greatness of life, the bright city lights, that feeling that if she just stretches out her arms, she can embrace the whole world. The world she moves through is chaotic; we see it only through the details she perceives. The film follows Sara’s emotional process of overcoming her traumas and fears – not just through cinematography or individual scenes, but through a structure that feels as if it has emerged from her stream of consciousness. What sets this film apart from other coming-of-age stories is the moments that reflect Sara’s poetic experience of the world – dreamlike visions through which she attempts to rationalise her past traumas. Her phantasmagoric overlay distorts time and space, leaving us uncertain of what is real, what belongs to memory, and where the dream truly begins.
Katarina Prpić
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY
Katarina Prpić is a Croatian film producer at Antitalent and Managing Director of 365 Films, an independent production company focused on developing and producing auteur-driven films. She graduated from studies in business economics from the Faculty of Economics. After several years working in the marketing industry, she transitioned into film, joining the Croatian Audiovisual Centre as Head of Marketing and Promotion. There, she participated in launching and coordinating the RE-ACT initiative, a transnational film development fund established by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, the Slovenian Film Centre, and Italy’s Friuli Venezia Giulia Audiovisual Fund. In 2014, she joined the production company Antitalent, where she has since produced internationally acclaimed films. Her most recent short film, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, directed by Nebojša Slijepčević, won the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the 2024 Festival de Cannes and the European Film Award for Best Short Film. The film was also nominated for both an Academy Award and a César Award. Prpić has been involved in numerous international co-productions, including DJ Ahmet by Georgi Unkovski, Little Trouble Girls by Urška Djukić, The Otter by Srđan Vuletić, Likemeback by Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli, and many others. Prpić is an alum of Talents Sarajevo, the EAVE Producers Workshop, EAVE Marketing, and Audiovisual Women.
PRODUCER’S STATEMENT
Jellyfish Live Forever until They Are Caught offers a sensitive yet hopeful exploration of adolescence, following teenage Sara as she navigates loss, illness, and the challenges of growing up. We believe the film has the potential to resonate deeply with young audiences while opening an important dialogue with their parents. After a year of script development with Nađa Petrović, we believe she is fully capable of transferring the strengths of her novel into a film, using cinema as a medium of emotion. Although this project brings challenges, both creatively and financially, we are prepared to build the project patiently, pursuing international partnerships, alternative financing opportunities, and flexible production approaches that will allow us to preserve the integrity of the story while bringing it to the screen in the best possible way.
Production company profile
Antitalent is a production company established in Croatia in 2007. Our portfolio includes feature and short films, television dramas, and documentary series. Our recent title, Nebojša Slijepčević’s short film The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent by won the Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes in2024, a European Film Award, and a César Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 2023, the short film The Real Truth about the Fight by Andrea Slaviček premiered in La Semaine de la Critique at Cannes. In 2021, Antoneta Kusijanović’s feature film Murina was co-produced with RT Features and Martin Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions and premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2021, when it won the Caméra d’Or. In 2023, Antitalent completed its first drama series, The Highlands, which was broadcast by the Croatian Public Broadcaster HRT in fall 2023. Service production is also a big part of the Antitalent slate, and we offer camera rental and post-production services. Currently, Antitalent is finishing The Vault, the first television co-production between the public broadcasters of Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro.
Where are we at?
TOTAL ESTIMATED BUDGET
980.896,00 €
FINANCES PENDING
935.896,00 €
FINANCING IN PLACE
45.000,00 €
Production timeline
2025 - 2026
Development
2026 - 2027
Financing
2028
Production