Danilo Stanimirović
Bamibiland, Danilo Stanimirović (2019)
Born in a small town in Serbia, Danilo Stanimirović is currently studying film and digital arts at the Faculty for Media and Communication in Belgrade. As a screenwriter, actor, producer, and film director, his first short film, Bambiland, premiered at Indie Short Fest LA, New Filmmakers New York, DukaFest - International Student Film Festival; International Short Film Festival - Film Front, where it won Best Cinematography; Pančevo Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay; and Sumadija International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award.
Danilo Stanimirović participated in an exclusive interview with Filmatique as part of Talents 2021.
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FILMATIQUE: Would you consider Bambiland to be an autobiographical film?
DANILO STANIMIROVIć: It is not an autobiography per se, but it has many autobiographical elements. The father in the film is played by my own father, basically playing himself; and the main character is played by my best friend, who knows me very well. I also used some of my family members to play the roles during the dinner scene, and my mother was responsible for the catering, so we all had a fun experience. But the film is about my generation, the young people in this small town, and the memories: what we leave in the place that we were born and grown up in, what it stays there and what we take with ourselves.
FLMTQ: Bambiland feels very nostalgic, and it is so heartbreaking to watch the character going back to the place where he used to play. When he meets a friend, it seems like he is trying to relive those past moments and they talk a lot about their childhood memories from the places that no longer exist. Did you want to evoke a feeling of nostalgia and create a coming-of-age film?
DS: I didn’t plan to make a nostalgic film, but it just happened, and it is about that. I really wanted to focus on their memories and on the characters themselves. What actually happened isn’t really important—but what their memories are—even if they aren’t real.
Bamibiland, Danilo Stanimirović (2019)
FLMTQ: Your cinematography is very beautiful and the wide shot where you see the characters’ reflex on the water really caught my attention. How was the process of creating this film visually?
DS: The place where we shot it is very inspiring and cinematic, and as itself it is a great metaphor. I talked a lot with my cinematographer, and we were very in accordance with one another. When the character is looking for job opportunities in Belgrade—the big city—the scenes were shot with handheld cameras, using a lot of camera movements; but when he comes back to his hometown, everything starts to be static, with long and wide shots. Bambiland is some kind of metaphor representing this generation and its characters.
FLMTQ: I see a lot of symbolism and metaphors in your film, especially in the final shot where the camera pulls out and we see the two characters at the end of a maze. What would you like people to take away from that scene and from the movie itself?
DS: If we look from a wider or above point of view, we see that this labyrinth has some exits and there is always an escape. I wanted to show that life is going on, there is no real end, and nothing is so great at the end.
Bamibiland, Danilo Stanimirović (2019)