Locarno Film Festival 2024: By the Stream, Toxic, Drowning Dry, When the Phone Rang | Festivals & Awards

Even with these petty battles, the country house is serene, and the two families appear to genuinely care for each other. So when tragedy strikes at the lake, Tomas playfully throws Ernesta’s niece in the lake, only to see her disappear in the water—it pierces through the film’s breezy rhythm. From that moment on, “Drowning Dry” becomes a different, more elusive film by switching to non-linear storytelling.

Whether Ernesta’s niece survived is an open question. And the lingering effects of another tragedy also arise in a later timeline. Scenes from the past seemingly repeat themselves, with several details altered. In one timeline, for instance, Ernesta and Juste dance to Donna Lewis’s’ “I Will Always Love You”; in another, they groove to Lighthouse Family’s High. The crisscrossing of memories, some warped by grief, adds further textures to two broken families working to find some way forward beyond their shared paralysis. It’s a fascinating bit of emotional excavation, which could’ve played slightly more unyielding earlier in the film. Still, “Drowning Dry” is an absorbing and intensely conceived story that acutely dramatizes the difficulty of overcoming a sudden loss.

Usually, these dispatches stop at three films, but since my last Radu Jude dispatch only featured two titles, I figured I was owed one. I also couldn’t imagine leaving Locarno without giving “When the Phone Rang” its flowers. Serbian writer/director Iva Radivojević’s third feature is a stunning attempt to translate the pain felt by forced migration through the eyes of a child. Guided by the voice of an off-screen narrator (Slavica Bajčeta), the film, which premiered in the festival’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente competition, begins in 1992 with a phone call at 10:36 am announcing to Lana (Natalija Ilinčić) the death of her grandfather. To the young Lana, the tragic call marks a permanent change in her life—it’s the beginning of the long war in Yugoslavia.

Subsequent calls over the course of days, weeks, and seemingly months announce several other life-altering events while providing a fuller picture of Lana. She becomes obsessed with a local glue-sniffing dropout named Vlada (Vasilije Zečević), finds solace and fun with her neighbor Jova (Anton Augustin), loses friends, and learns family secrets involving her father and grandfather. 

Radivojević has a commanding vision for this story, acting as writer, producer, editor, art director, and composer. Cinematographer Martin DiCicco bolsters Radivojević’s storytelling through his plaintive use of 16mm photography, which adds a dreamlike quality to the nightmarish reality. Apart from the film’s controlled visual and aural form, “When the Phone Rang” lacks a sense of time. That is by design. Like leaves dancing across the grass, the blowing out of a child’s memory reveals much through its seeming randomness. The feeling of place is singular, demarking what will be lost. The phone that seems to ring at the exact time every Friday is the invasion into her life that seems to have happened without reason.