Until the Day Ends

From Viennale

Serbian director Jelena Maksimović’s latest film is a love story born of unrest and resistance. University student Lena (Lena Trifunović) and her friends prepare for a protest in Belgrade, one of a series of actions against Serbia’s authoritarian government. But a group of young men loyal to the regime are planning a violent attack on the protesters. Among them is Stefan (Andrija Krivokapić), a friend of Lena’s who has fallen in with a local gang and sees in Lena the possibility of a different kind of life. Intimate and immersive, DO KRAJA DANA throws the viewer into the middle of the strife with little warning and no obvious context, allowing the protagonists to be seen the way they see themselves and each other: as individuals struggling to forge new identities against an uncertain ideological backdrop. Maksimović’s fluid direction and the restless cinematography of Paul Spengemann emphasise the fear, the nervousness, but also the exhilaration of being a young person in the throes of what could be a revolution. At the centre of the storm is Lena, an intelligent, headstrong woman looking for a path forward in a nation stubbornly hanging on to old ideas. (Michael Sicinski)