Synopsis
When a relationship between two sisters turns into resentment accumulated over the years of growing up together, must come to the breaking point. The decisive confrontation is painful and reveals many secrets. If this interferes youthful rashness, the outcome can be tragic. The whole story is set among wagons at railway station. This is the story about anger, attention and a gun.
Film Participations Awards
sarajevo film festival- special jury award
star film festival- grand prix
belgrade documentary and short film festival- best regional student film
dirigo film festival Bristol- best international student film
STIFF Rijeka- special jury award
kratkofil plus
one take shot film festival
cinemaiubit
new wave film festival
filmski front festival
Brac film festival
Fekk Ljubljana
Festival Novi val
International Euro film festival
ShorTS, Maremetraggio
Colchester film festival
Short form, Gornji Milanovac
MIT Fest
Uluslararası Boğaziçi Film Festivali
WhatAshort India
Cast & Team
Director: Anja Kavic
Cinematographer: Jelena Vujasinovic
Editor: Dario Djurakovic
Technical Specs
Color: Color
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Sound Format: Mono
Veljko Eraković
This movie uses ghostly and very scenic area as an exterior, together with frightening sound effects and excellent camera and photography, both on the very edge of sepia. It is this combination that gives the impression of two leading female roles being trapped in space and time. With unresolved life dramas and conflicts from the past, obviously making the same mistakes again and again, impression is that two of them are inside of ever rotating circle that they are unable to leave. Two girls, sisters Thea and Aya are located between derelict wagons on rail tracks. The atmosphere that this movie creates is that both location and language, even year are not specified and are irrelevant, making the story universal. Scenery is composed as if it was for an antic drama play. However, there is a possible problem turning up because of that. From time to time acting is too similar to one of classical theatrical type. If the acting was less theatrical, it would be more precise. Their conflict is interrupted for the moment by a young man with a gun. The girl with the white hat Aya is having her birthday, and Thea left the party because of that gun. It was just a spark from which the flame of severe emotional conflict between two sisters will ignite. The finale is fatal, Thea is aiming the gun at Aya, by which she is intending to end all disputes with her sister. However, being in blood relation means that by killing her sister she would also kill herself, so she puts the gun away for the moment. Which amplifies the intriguing effect of the whole movie experience.
Olivia Harsan
It is hard to believe that Anja Kavic’s powerful drama Some of Us is a short film because the theatrical delivery of the narrative engrosses the viewer to a point where time seems as though it has lapsed. The film begins as a young woman paces through a run down train in a rail yard. Suddenly voices begin to echo throughout the carriage as if to taunt the woman and the viewer will question: Are these voices from the past or the present? She steps out of the train where another woman awaits seated on the steps of another carriage. A menacing atmosphere invades the viewer’s conscious at this point as the women begin to talk. We find out that they are sisters and, as the tension in their interaction rises, we come to understand that their relationship as siblings is dysfunctional. The drama is intense in Some of Us and this is due to the phenomenal acting – we really begin to believe the extent of the issues between the sisters, particularly when one takes out a gun threatening to shoot the other. And yet, the trains remain motionless and silent in opposition of their purpose. There is no progression, only a collapse of negative emotions and eventually a disturbing meltdown.
Ozge Ozduzen
Some of Us functions as a metaphor for women’s relationship to the cinema. On one side of the railway is a woman who peeks; on the other (hidden) side there is a woman (who will be) on display. Before the spectator sees the woman on display, the other one searches for her inside and outside the train whilst the camera follows her attempts to find the other woman. The correlation between railway and cinema, in addition to women’s relationship to cinema, unfold in the establishing shots of the film where we follow one of the sisters.
The film’s leitmotif is the elasticity and fragility of sisterhood. Sisters on screen has always been an attractive subject matter of cinema, such as Cries and Whispers (1972) and The Silence (1963) of Ingmar Bergman or Hannah and Her Sisters by Woody Allen (1986). In Some of Us, the two women’s identities and understanding of their selves seem to have evolved from their perception of and position to each other. Even if the film is a great endeavor in its portrayal of the complicated relationship of sisters by the perspective a woman director, Anja Kavic (unlike the films I mentioned earlier), it still tends to present us a rather negative representation of sisters (a bit too hysterical). However, as the gaze in the film is not a form of masculine control and serves as a locus for two sister’s identities and relationships, Some of Us represents the social and psychological existence of two sisters by making use of the sepia filter.
Sara Maksimovic
Girlhood and female identity remain areas of marginalization and, paradoxically, mystification in contemporary film and art as a whole. Not to disregard the intricacies of brotherly affection, I dare say this makes the relationship between sisters quite a tricky subject. The film 'Some of us' carefully scratches the surface of this kind of bond, placing the notion of 'attention' - a major point in feminist observations of female identity - in the center of the particular conflict at hand.
A woman is continually followed by the image of herself, as John Berger points out, and she has been taught from earliest childhood to survey everything she is and does. The instinct has a purpose: how she appears to others, men (as the dominance of the male voice in the film suggests), is considered to be the result of her success or failure. Consequently, not to be seen by others is to lose identity and this bitter feeling is well portrayed in the character of the neglected sister.
Why is it then, that the one receiving all the attention is the one holding a gun? Surely, the breaking of such social constructions is anticipated by the author, and from this point it makes no difference which of the sisters gets shot.
Viorella Manolache
The camera moves in-between, in a separation line and a parallel corridor, anticipating the final shot gun. The film deals with a frontal relation (almost a duel), a lets solve it in the arena /an open/closed space of the wagons.
A deep psychoanalytic dispute of the position – being in the center of everything or being at its margins – which become more aggressive along with the interaction of the two sisters: almost a fighting match, arbitrated by the male character. Almost a biblical dispute – Cain and Abel as feminine version – the argue can conserve the both parts because it is win and loose relationship.