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Serbian filmmaker Stefan Djordjević is prepping his sophomore feature, “The Leaves Hang Trembling,” a hybrid docufiction that explores the impact of a teacher’s life and work on the people around her. The project took home the top prize last week at the Crossroads Co-Production Forum in the Thessaloniki Film Festival’s industry section, Agora.

As with Djordjević’s feature debut, “Wind, Talk to Me,” which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival this year before winning the top prize at Sarajevo, “The Leaves Hang Trembling” is a cinematic ode to the director’s late mother, who he describes as “the most important person in my life.”

Djordjević’s first film — a deeply personal attempt to reckon with his mother’s death — earned a rapturous review from Variety’s Guy Lodge, who praised the “marvelous” docufiction for how it worked through grief “with wit, grace and imagination…weav[ing] fact, fiction and memory into a heart-bursting tribute to [the director’s] late mother.”

“The Leaves Hang Trembling” is a companion piece to that film, broadening its scope beyond the four walls of the Djordjević family home. “‘Wind, Talk to Me’ was about how [my mother] inspired my family,” the director told Variety. “But with ‘The Leaves Hang Trembling,’ we can also see how she touched others as well.”

The film documents the life of Djordjević’s mother, Negrica Neca Đorđević, who in 2002 was hired by a local elementary school, where she worked for more than a decade as a beloved teacher, community leader and president of the teachers’ union. Fourteen years later, she was summarily dismissed without cause, “leaving her devastated emotionally,” and with the sense that “her faith in community and loyalty [had been] betrayed,” according to the director.

In her darkest moment, however, Neca’s students rallied behind her and rose up in her defense, rekindling her hope and her faith in her community. Using direct quotes from her diaries and letters, as well as contemporaneous audio recordings of the events as they unfolded, “The Leaves Hang Trembling” will tell the story of an inspirational woman “who gave so much of her energy, and also dedication and caring and love” to her family, her students and her community. 

Djordjević said the film “explores what it means to care beyond rules, to connect with others in ways that endure,” while also urging audiences “to feel the courage and compassion of the teacher, to witness the quiet strength of everyday care, and to leave believing in the transformative power of human connection.”

“The Leaves Hang Trembling” is being produced against the backdrop of a broad, student-led protest movement that for the past year has galvanized the Serbian public against President Aleksandar Vučić. It began last November, after the collapse of a railway station canopy in the city of Novi Sad that killed 16 people, sparking outrage over the endemic corruption and the culture of impunity that many Serbians blamed for the disaster.

At this week’s industry award ceremony in Thessaloniki, where “The Leaves Hang Trembling” won the top prize in the Crossroads Co-Production Forum, producer Dragana Jovović, of Belgrade-based Non-Aligned Films, who’s producing the film in co-production with Vanja Jambrović of Restart, dedicated the win to Dijana Hrka, the mother of a 27-year-old man, Stefan, who was killed in the Novi Sad tragedy. Earlier this month, Hrka launched a hunger strike in front of Serbia’s National Assembly, demanding a “real investigation” into the events at Novi Sad and calling for “the liberation of all arrested students during the protest,” according to Jovović.

While Djordjević said he wants to make a “universal film,” he also recognizes that the events of “The Leaves Hang Trembling” and the current political crisis in Serbia are connected. Since last year, many Serbian teachers and university professors have been summarily dismissed for supporting the student protests; in many cases, noted Djordjević, the students have rallied in their teachers’ defense.

That’s why the director sees “The Leaves Hang Trembling” as not only a testament to his late mother and the lives she touched, but as a part of his country’s “collective memory” — a history that continues to be written in real time.

The events depicted in the film “didn’t just happen nine years ago,” Djordjević said. “It’s still happening, and on a bigger level.”

The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Oct. 30 – Nov. 9.