The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent – Interview with Film Writer / Director Nebojsa Slijepcevic

I'm Sofia Sheehan with Borrowing Tape. I'm here with Nebojsa Slijepcevic, the director of The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent. Congrats on the movie.

Thank you, thank you.

Well, the movie tells the story of Tomo Buzov, who died defending the rights of Bosnians against a paramilitary group. You mentioned in interviews that you wouldn't do the movie unless you had permission from Tomo's son. How did you manage to take on the responsibility of telling his story?

Yeah, well, I have a background in documentary films. I did a lot of documentaries, and I approached this film, although it is fiction, as if it were a documentary and with the same responsibility. Because I was fully aware that not only Tomo Buzov's son would watch the film but also that on this train, there were a couple of hundred passengers, and many of them will see the film — also many people who lost their relatives in this massacre will see the film. It was very important for me to make this film in a way that did not retraumatize them with our treatment of the topic. I tried to research as much as I could. I read thousands of pages of newspaper articles of testimonies from witnesses from the train because there were several trials of the murderers from the train during past decades. I got the transcripts of the trials and the right of the testimonies. When I was writing a script, I decided to make all the characters except Tomo Buzov fictional characters. All other characters are fictionalized, but they're based on the experiences of the people from the train. And many of the lines that are spoken in the film are taken from the testimonies. So not all of course, but most of the lines really were spoken on that day.

Another interesting thing you bring up is not wanting to retraumatize; the movie is about a violent massacre, but we, as the audience, don't actually see anything or anybody get killed. There's no outright violence. We only see what the people on the train see. Why was it important not to take us to where the massacre happened?

This event, of course, was a real event, but I didn't want to make a historical lesson; I was looking for something that was universal and that I could relate to. Thirty years later, I think that many people who will watch the film can relate to it; although it is far away for them, both geographically and in time. The universal thing is this experience of witnessing the violence when you're not directly threatened. I wanted to put the audience in the shoes of a man who is just minding his own business, traveling on a peaceful one day on the train, and then suddenly everything changes in a matter of minutes. And he has to decide what to do. And whatever he decides, it will change his life forever. Every decision in such situations has some consequences, even if you decide to remain silent and to remain passive.

Yeah, it's an interesting battle between when speaking is not enough and when it's too much. And I was wondering, what are some other themes and subject matters that drive you as a filmmaker?

Again, as I said, I have a documentary background. Whatever I do, I want it to be not only escapism but something that is really important for me, for my neighbors, for my friends, for my society, something that at this moment I find important to deal with. Very often these are not funny or nice topics or entertaining topics, but something that I spend talking to with my friends over dinners or when I meet them, something that bothers us. That's whatever it is. In our region of Balkans, of ex-Yugoslavia, we had a bloody war 30 years ago that was fueled by many things, but nationalism was one of the things that fueled this war, and still, 30 years later, we still feel it today, what happened 30 years ago. This is one of the important topics. The trauma that happened 30 years ago still in some way influenced our being today, and to solve it somehow, we must talk about that. That's one of the things. Right now, I'm finishing a documentary that is dealing with something that happened very recently in Zagreb, with a quarrel over a children's park where two groups of citizens, one group wanted to build a church in the park, and the other group wanted to keep it as a children's park, they confronted. The neighbors both live in the same neighborhood, but it almost ended with a bloody conflict, so this is one of the types of topics that I'm interested in, whatever determines our daily life.

As a documentarian, would you say that this film is more influenced by documentaries you've seen, or are there other films that inspired your making of The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent?

Well, this film is more influenced by several fiction films that I have seen. From a directing point of view, it's quite classical; I use quite classical film language in this film. So, I can name many influences in the directing style, from very classic classics like Hitchcock to some more recent ones like Tarantino, if you want to, but only in the directing style.

To close it out, I know that this movie has received a lot of praise abroad. It won the the Palme [d'Or] for short film, and it's gotten a lot of accolades across Europe and the US. What has the reception been like to this movie at home?

It was fantastic. And for me, that's the most important thing because it's very nice to get Palme d'Or. It's fantastic, really. But after all, I live in Croatia, and I make films primarily for Croats and for people who live in Croatia because that's the most important for me. There is still a huge interest in this film, which makes me very happy because that's why we make films, for the audience to see them. Nothing makes me happier than when we get a lot of requests for screeners from people living in Croatia or when we have a full cinema, cinemas for one 15-minute long, very short film, but still people go to the cinema to see it. It's just like full success for me.