SITTING DOWN WITH… MIMI VLAOVIC
This week I was lucky enough to sit down with Mimi Vlavoic, a bright, articulate director/writer/costume designer/everything else you can imagine. After a bit of light chat about Alcatraz (she’s in San Francisco for a film festival and had just got back from a guided tour of the island), I jumped straight in by asking about her experience winning both a screenplay and audience’s choice award at last year’s Watersprite for her film Your Guardian. Hectic seems to put it lightly. Having only had the Belgrade premier for the film literally the night before, she’d had to hop on a plane straight over to the bright lights of Cambridge. But the response she got from its showing made it all worth it, ‘particularly for the audience’s choice award and the Q&A’ she tells me. When I ask if it’s almost embarrassing to have that many people queueing up to talk to you and compliment you, she laughs and tells me that’s such a British question. ‘It’s amazing not embarrassing!’ She describes the process of working so intently on a vulnerable passion project as being quite lonely sometimes, so to have people show such a genuine interest and respect for your work help makes it all worth it.
But what made making this film such a concentrated and emotionally taxing experience for Mimi? ‘I usually write fiction books, so normally when I write it’s fantasy’, she explains, ‘and I can write as an escape’, but drawing from the nitty gritty of family dynamics during the tumultuous break-up of Yugoslavia is less relaxing as a writing process it seems. And the film is intensely personal: she tells me how it’s largely inspired by her parent’s flee from Serbia to escape war, and the daunting prospect of having to tell their conservative parents (Mimi’s grandparents) their plan. Written in Serbian and set in the distinctly specific socio-historical context of Belgrade, Mimi goes even further in rooting these experiences in her family’s lived experiences by including the direct wording of phrases they use when recounting the early 90s.
How do your family feel about the film? I ask, almost tentatively as another core theme of Your Guardian is the oppressive presence of a smothering family preventing the protagonists from making their own choices. ‘Oh they love it!’ She even adds that her other side of the family are jealous they’re not represented in it. When I seem surprised, she explains that they don’t see the claustrophobic element of family life as bad, so her Grandad still thinks the character that reflects him makes all the right decisions. I reassure her that this must be a strength to the realism of her storytelling, and she laughingly tells me it’s something a lot of Serbian people will be able to relate to, as close-knit families are an integral part of the culture. ‘If I don’t call home at least once a day they assume that means I’m dead in a ditch’.
“I want Serbian representation that isn’t just a character who’s the little brother of a Russian villain!”
But with Mimi studying in London, home in Belgrade is a lot further than it used to be. It seems her life reflects a lot of the emotional charge in Your Guardian, she’d been itching for a clean slate and more freedom, and it seems her move to the UK for film school has helped scratch that itch. But that by no means suggests she’s leaving her home country behind, she speaks insightfully of wanting her PHD to focus on how poorly Serbians have been represented in the media- ‘I want Serbian representation that isn’t just a character who’s the little brother of a Russian villain!’ And the origins of her love of film start in Serbia too. During the early years of Mimi’s childhood there were limited exports and imports, meaning she had no access to animated films and the Disney movies. So, they would buy pirated copies from the street and watch them even before they landed in Western cinemas. She speaks fondly of memories where multiple characters from the same film were dubbed by the voice of one man; making for a believable 7 dwarves but maybe a slightly gruff Snow White.
In short, it was a delight to speak to Mimi, and I am certain that her creative eye, unique knack for storytelling, and warm and vibrant personality will secure her an incredible career in the industry. (Even if her Grandma is keeping the pressure on high by asking how she’ll possibly top her last film). So why not see what her granny - and the entire Watersprite audience and awards team - were raving about by giving Your Guardian a watch, and keeping updated with Mimi’s Instagram @cuvamtefilm.
Written by Lorelei Booth
