In Serbian artist Iva Radivojević’s third feature – part memoir, part drama – a girl tries to recall her exiled past as a personal loss melds with the start of the Yugoslavian war

Hovering between memoir, docu-essay and drama, Serbian artist Iva Radivojević’s third feature opens with a phone call that changes everything. Eleven-year-old Lana (a proxy for Radivojević, played by Natalija Ilinčić) receives the news that her grandfather has died; home alone, she is told by the speaker to communicate that to her mother. The Bakelite clock on the wall says it is precisely 10.36am on a Friday in 1992, “when the country of X was still a country”.

Friday 10.36am 1992 becomes a point and a rift in time, through which the historical erupts into the personal; a more intimate companion piece, perhaps, to the 2006 Romanian new wave classic 12.08 East of Bucharest. The news of Lana’s grandfather’s death melds with the start of the Yugoslavian war (perhaps the two events are linked, as he was a retired colonel). Suitcases are packed; Lana, in her memory always wearing a pink Nike shell suit, is driven by her father to the airport, presumably to emigrate. With these dramatised fragments – as well as ones of everyday Serbian life – threaded together in a third-person narration later revealed to be hers, Lana seems to be reconstructing her own exiled past.