Zvonimir Jurić: Only a Stone Is Innocent

Croatian director Zvonimir Jurić returns to Sarajevo this year with Small Things, an intimate family drama in which two sisters travel to an isolated island to visit their father and brother. However, their stay on the island and the sale of the family land forces them to re-examine their relationships, responsibilities, and unresolved conflicts. Jurić brings together an excellent ensemble cast whose quiet, subtle, and precise performances create an atmosphere that conveys not only the island’s physical isolation, but also the characters’ emotional isolation from one another.

Small Things was inspired by Jurica Pavičić’s short story The Fourth King. Pavičić is also the film’s co-screenwriter. How did your collaboration come about, and what inspired you in his story?

This is Jurica’s and my second collaboration, so I would say we know each other and each other’s working habits quite well. Jurica knows and understands Dalmatia. He has also written an excellent collection of essays and journalistic pieces about Dalmatia, The Book of the South. Like all his stories, the short story The Fourth King is convincingly rooted in the socioeconomic reality of the Dalmatia it depicts, which is important for someone like me, who comes from the continental part of the country. The story served as our inspiration, while the real work was done through conversation and writing.

The screenplay is driven less by plot and more by interpersonal relationships. What were the greatest challenges you faced while writing it?

I did an extensive research about life on a small island. The island of Ist, in the Zadar archipelago, which has a population of 200, served as a kind of laboratory for me. During several visits to the island, I became friends with a retired couple, the Vlasanovićs, whom I stayed with and who answered hundreds of my questions about what it is like to live on a small island, especially in winter. I am grateful to them for that, particularly to Diana Vlasanović. Afterward, Jurica and I felt that small events, or small things, were enough to tell this story. That is also where the film’s title comes from.

The film follows a family over the course of one weekend: a father, two daughters, a son, and two grandchildren. Marija Škaričić and Ivana Roščić are excellent as the sisters, while Izudin Bajrović is outstanding in the role of the father. How much of the family dynamic was already written into the screenplay, and how much depended on the actors and their interpretations of the characters? What do you pay the most attention to when working with actors?

In my case, it is important to have a working atmosphere that is also relaxed. The actors are always invited to suggest their own solutions, and I will certanly listen to them patiently. They are the ones who will perform and give life to the words on the page, to the screenplay. I want both the actors and the non-professional performers to feel comfortable while working on the film. Firstly, because that is the humane thing to do, and secondly, because they can give their best when they do not feel threatened or tense. I make them coffee, we talk, and then we work. Later, we reap what we have sown. Working with actors depends on many factors. You also need a certain amount of luck.

The film also features Juraj Lerotić, a director who made his acting debut in his own film Safe Place. How did Lerotić become part of the cast? What was most important to you when developing his character?

I have known Juraj for about 20 years, we are good friends. I had the impression that he could play the role. In fact, I became convinced of it after watching his film Safe Place. I invited him to audition, and he got the part. Juraj is an exceptionally methodical person, so we spent a great deal of time discussing the character he played. We were not interested in precisely what was wrong with his character or what he felt internally, but rather in what he did or did not do. I would describe it as a kind of behavioural approach to thinking about the character.

You are also a director with a considerable number of acting experience. Do you think directors who try acting can understand actors better and, as a result, become better directors?

I do not think it is essential, but it helps you as a director understand what it is like to be in front of the camera. The processes actors go through become easier to understand once you put yourself in their shoes.

The island atmosphere is extremely important to the film. How did you choose the filming location? Do you think the island’s isolation is crucial to the film’s atmosphere, or could this story have been set somewhere else?

I am drawn to places that are isolated, remote, and inaccessible. Perhaps that is because, in my imagination, urban locations have already been exhausted. I find it difficult to make myself sit down and start developing a story set in a large city. There is not much I can do about that except follow this limitation. It is also liberating when you have no choice. I will gladly watch someone else’s film set in a city, but I will almost always tend to place my own films in sparsely populated areas. 

When it comes to this film, as well as your artistic practice in general, would you say that microcosms such as the one presented in Small Things are what primarily interest you as a screenwriter and director?

Fortunately, I still don’t know all the things that interest me. I know that I like for a film to “bathe” in its own atmosphere. The poet Paul Valéry said that every poem is an oscillation between sense and sound. In his equation, if sense is the meaning we derive from the narrative, from the sequence of events, then what he calls sound is what I would call atmosphere, something less tangible. What I mean is that when I begin working on a new film, I do not begin with meaning, but with a feeling. At the same time, feeling is not an innocent thing in itself. Our feelings, too, are colonised by our thoughts. Only a stone is innocent.