Based on a short story and script by Stefan Bošković, Bosnian helmer Srđan Vuletić’s Otter (Vidra) tells the story of a 16-year-old girl named Hana who has to face two major traumas, in addition to the expectations of her mother and extended family. Vuletić’s directorial debut, Summer in the Golden Valley, also featured a 16-year-old, namely a boy who must repay his late father’s debt. In his latest, Hana must cope with the death of her father, whose final wish was to be buried in a space suit. Matthew McConaughey has no role in the movie, but he gets referenced in Otter (more about that later).
“A reserved teenager, Hana, has been invited by her crush, Balsa, to go to a lake with him to film a solar eclipse. On the morning of their planned trip, however, Hana’s father, a top-notch pilot, dies,” reads a synopsis for the film, which celebrated its world premiere at the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. “In his will, Hana’s father requests that he be buried in a space suit. Frustrated by her mother’s inability to stand up to the rest of the family, who want to give her father a traditional funeral, Hana runs away from home and goes to the lake.” She wants to have a good time with Balsa and his friend and social media star Luka, only to be disappointed and experience violence. “Hana must suppress her considerate and obedient nature or her destiny will be as dark as the solar eclipse.”
Vuletić has been busy after a 17-year “break” of sorts. “Many people think I took a break from filmmaking, but in essence, I was stuck with the production of one of my previous films,” he told THR during an interview at the Sarajevo festival. “It was that movie, Gym, that I premiered last year. Remember this saying, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’? And I made this mistake.”
He reacted by starting to develop many things at the same time, “and it all came to fruition more or less over the span of five years,” Vuletić explained. “So in the last four years, I did two series as a creator and two feature films. But before that was not really a break. I did some theater performances as a director and some documentary things. So it was not that I was on holiday.”
Srđan Vuletić
Courtesy of Sarajevo Film Festival
What is the story behind the space suit? “That was not in the early script version,” the director told THR. “It came along as a solution that I asked the script writer to make. We had a movie about a girl facing trauma. And I told him it’s somehow too linear for me to have only one trauma. I didn’t want Hana to have any respite. So then we brought this big trauma inside the house.”
An otter captured in a box also plays a key role in the film. “One thing I changed right before shooting was that I thought maybe it would not be good to see the otter as an animal in a physical presence,” Vuletić shared with THR. “The otter symbolizes her trauma.”
In a later scene, the otter can be seen but only in animated form. The director planned for this animated sequence early on. “I wanted to make a movie that’s different from the rest of regional cinematography,” explained Vuletić. In consultations with others, “this animation thing clicked,” he recalled. “It’s a moment where we enter her inner world. It’s the moment when she finally understands that she should not run from her problems. It’s a moment of change when she says, ‘Okay, my first step in solving the problems is to recognize I have a problem and to face it’.”
So what does Matthew McConaughey have to do with Otter? There’s a scene in which Luka’s looks are compared to those of the famous actor. But Vuletić says another Hollywood star was initially planned to get name-checked in that scene. “There was another actor we had in mind for this role of Luka, and this guy resembles Sean Penn,” the filmmaker told THR. “And then for a long time in the script, it was Sean Penn. Then, when we decided to have Pavle Marković, a great, great actor, play Luka, I said, ‘Listen, I think it doesn’t fit his character to say some name that he really resembles. Let’s say a name that he thinks he looks like.’ McConaughey. For some reason, that name came up.”