As in several of my most recent short films, The First Week of August also explores complex family dynamics. In that sense, the film represents a natural continuation of my ongoing preoccupation with the fragility of the nuclear family, while also emerging from the strong influence of films such as Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman and John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence. It was precisely these two films that provided my initial motivation for exploring the figure of the “woman on the edge.” At the same time, the film’s premise grew out of an extensive process of working with the actors, particularly Ivana Roščić, which began at the earliest stages of the screenplay’s development. A significant part of my writing process is based on a method in which actors become co-creators of their roles, essentially starting from a synopsis and developing material drawn from their own personal experiences. With The First Week of August, I am also introducing strong autobiographical elements into a feature film screenplay for the first time, attempting in this way to delve even deeper into the complex dynamics of parent-child relationships. 

More generally, what I find particularly compelling in cinema is an atmosphere of mystery. For this reason, while writing the screenplay, I wanted the protagonist’s backstory to remain unknown, allowing Ivana, as the central character, to function as a kind of enigma. In this regard, I found Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s definition of the character Jessica in Memoria particularly inspiring. He described her, rather radically, as “a supposition rather than a character.” I was therefore especially interested in the multiple possible interpretations of Ivana’s trauma, which open up an entire spectrum of readings, while a series of situations simultaneously reveals her fundamental inability to fit within the confines of bourgeois “normality” and prescribed social roles. In contrast to Ivana’s seemingly “displaced” perspective, the outside world represents what Lacan calls the “social construction of reality”—the symbolic order that defines a social group. In this sense, the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding Ivana’s condition paradoxically becomes an authentic expression of class belonging.