Milica Tomovic on Sarajevo Industry Prizewinner ‘Big Women’ and Why Audiences Are Afraid of ‘Bad’ Women ‘Who Do Bad Things’

Serbian filmmaker Milica Tomović, whose sophomore feature, “Big Women,” was one of the big winners at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry awards on Thursday, thinks audiences are afraid of women behaving badly. “People are not that interested to watch movies with bad female characters who do bad things,” the director told Variety.

“Big Women,” which is produced by Dragana Jovović of Non-Aligned Films and Jelena Radenković for Big Time Production, won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo. The film is pitched as a road-trip dramedy that follows two wild women who embark on an unexpected trip to the coast of Montenegro. There they’ll settle forgotten bills, rediscover their friendship and uncover long-buried secrets.

Describing the film as “a character-based story,” Tomović said it’s “based on the dynamics of this very strong friendship.” “This is the center of the story, between Mira and Tina,” she said of the best friends and beauticians at the heart of “Big Women.” “It’s a journey — of the two of them and of their friendship.”

The director’s critically praised first feature, “Celts,” centers on a child’s birthday party that spirals out of control and exposes the fractures in her extended family. But Tomović said she’s equally drawn to “non-DNA connections” — the families we choose, rather than the ones we’re born into.

“You got connected with the first cigarette that you tried, exchanging clothes, suffering and giving advice,” she said. “And then gradually, you become [the close-knit friends] that we see in the movie.”

“Celts” premiered at the pandemic edition of the Berlin Film Festival in 2021. Reviewing the “lively, auspicious, all-in-one-night debut” at that summer’s Sarajevo fest, where it won best director honors for Tomović, Variety’s Guy Lodge described the film as “a cleverly grafted feat of personal-as-political filmmaking, fueled equally by nostalgia for innocence and a wryer sense of good riddance to bad times.”

For “Big Women,” Tomović drew inspiration from U.K. filmmaker Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a slice-of-life comedy seen through the eyes of a free-spirited London schoolteacher. With her protagonist Mira, however, the Serbian said she wants to “do the opposite” by portraying a prickly character that the viewer will love to hate — but grow to love again.

“I want the audience to connect with her, because as the film comes to the end, we have more and more similarities to her,” she said. “We can see a bit of her background, why she became the way she is — tough, rough around the edges, and a bit of a difficult person” who makes those around her uncomfortable in her presence.

“Big Women” is one of a number of buzzy projects on the slate of Jovović’s Belgrade-based Non-Aligned Films. Currently in post-production and slated for 2025 release is “Wind, Talk to Me,” the feature directorial debut of Stefan Đorđević, a three-country co-production with Slovenia’s SPOK Films and Croatia’s Restart.

The company is also minority co-producing Slovenian director by Urška Djukić’s coming-of-age story “Little Trouble Girls,” awarded at Les Arcs’ works-in-progress section last year, as well as “Wondrous is the Silence of My Master,” Montenegrin filmmaker Ivan Salatić’s anticipated follow-up to his Venice Critics’ Week premiere “You Have the Night.”

Jovović and her producing partners are also financing “In the Shadow of the Horns,” from Serbia’s Ognjen Glavonić, whose debut “The Load” premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. Meanwhile, veteran Portuguese scriptwriter and Miguel Gomes collaborator Mariana Ricardo (“Grand Tour”) has come on board to co-write Serbian director Marko Grba Singh’s “Forget the Ocean, Why Not Try Surfing These Insane River Waves,” which won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo in 2021.

Radenković, who served as executive producer on “Celts,” is currently in production on Ivan Marković feature-length docu-fiction “Promised Spaces,” a co-production between Serbia, France, Germany and Cambodia. She’s also developing the Serbian-German co-production “Tale of the Plum Spirit,” the documentary fiction debut of Belgrade-born Milica Đenić.

The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 16 – 23.