Ljilja leaving
2015 · short fiction minority co-production project · film
Cross-border short film about a girl witnessing her aunt's departure from Bosnia.
Prekogranični kratki igrani film o djevojčici koja gleda kako joj teta odlazi iz Bosne u Njemačku.
This project credentials: Minority co-production
Notes from the producer
Ljilja odlazi was Aleksandra Odić's film. My part was the one I know best and keep coming back to: being the Croatian minority co-producer who takes someone else's authorial vision and turns it into a financeable structure. In 2014 and 2015 we ran the German track toward BKM and the Croatian track toward HAVC in parallel, held a casting round in Zagreb, and built out a real budget — 776.456,41 HRK / 102.570,20 EUR, with about 56 percent requested from HAVC. On paper it was ready.
I'll be plain about how it ended, because the archive is. It never reached pre-production. In the summer of 2015 the cooperation was ended at the director's request; we terminated the co-production memo on 11 August and withdrew the HAVC application on 8 September as the film was steered toward Bosnia outside our structure. That happens — authors change their minds about who they want at the table, and a co-producer's job includes closing things down cleanly when they do. The material itself lived on; it resurfaced years later in Aleksandra's Great Wall of China. What I keep from Ljilja is the proof that we could assemble the whole Croatian side of an international short and run two funders' logic at once, right up to the line.
- Matija Radeljak
The story
Ljilja odlazi began as one clean dramatic idea: an eight-year-old girl named Maja watching her aunt Ljilja, a young artist with no future in local factory work, quietly prepare to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina for Germany. The whole film sits inside a single summer day, told from the child's line of sight, where post-war ruins and freshly rebuilt family houses stand next to each other and the adults carry a tension Maja can feel but not yet name. Written and directed by Aleksandra Odić, shot by Katharina Diessner, it was a coming-of-age drama about departure as something painful and necessary at the same time.
Structurally it was never a Croatian film. It was a German-led project, developed out of the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb) orbit, that needed a Croatian co-production partner to reach the region it was actually about. That is the role Aning Film played: minority co-producer. Between late 2014 and 2015 the package moved on two tracks at once — German-language script and budget revisions aimed at BKM funding (with a Letter of Intent from Berlin's aug & ohr medien, dated 12 January 2015), and Croatian application materials aimed at the Hrvatski audiovizualni centar. The working title travelled with it, from LJILJA GEHT to DIE CHINESISCHE MAUER to, in the Croatian cut of the paperwork, Ljilja odlazi.
The financing was worked out in detail rather than sketched. The 24 April 2015 plan and budget converge on a total of 776.456,41 HRK / 102.570,20 EUR, with the largest single share — 437.255,54 HRK / 57.761,63 EUR, about 56 percent — requested from HAVC through the minority co-production line, and the remainder split across dffb and Aning Film. The cost breakdown ran across fees, technical equipment, postproduction, general expenses and a modest promotion line, i.e. a budget built to be shot, not just to look serious on an application. Alongside the numbers the creative work was tangible too: visual sketch boards fixing the tone, and a casting round held in Zagreb in May 2015.
Then it stopped. In the summer of 2015 the cooperation was ended at the director's request. The co-production deal memo was formally terminated on 11 August 2015, and on 8 September 2015 Aning Film sent HAVC a written notice withdrawing the minority co-production application, as the project was redirected toward filming in Bosnia and Herzegovina outside the original structure. The film, in the form this dossier documents, never entered pre-production.
What the archive does show is a fully assembled minority co-production — script, crew, cross-border financing, casting — taken right up to the submission line and then set down cleanly when the partnership dissolved. The underlying material didn't disappear: Odić's later film Great Wall of China (2017) carries the same Maja-and-Ljilja departure motif, the direct descendant of the German working title. What Ljilja proves, then, is the service and not the release — the specific work of standing up a Croatian side of an international short and running the HAVC and German funding logic in parallel, all the way to the point where the authors decided to take it somewhere else.
Milestones
- 2014-11 — German script package circulates in its 11th revision under the working title LJILJA GEHT (AT)
- 2015-01-12 — Letter of Intent issued in Berlin by aug & ohr medien for the BKM funding context
- 2015-04-24 — HAVC minority co-production application (2nd deadline) submitted with a 776.456,41 HRK / 102.570,20 EUR budget
- 2015-05 — Casting round held in Zagreb
- 2015-08-11 — dffb and Aning Film co-production deal memo formally terminated
- 2015-09-08 — Written notice withdrawing the HAVC minority co-production application sent
Outcomes
- Financing package assembled — Complete plan and budget totalling 776.456,41 HRK / 102.570,20 EUR (24 April 2015), with 437.255,54 HRK / 57.761,63 EUR (approx. 56%) requested from HAVC and the remainder split across dffb and Aning Film.
- HAVC minority co-production application filed — Submitted for the 2015 second deadline before being withdrawn on 8 September 2015.
- Co-production terminated — The dffb and Aning Film deal memo was formally terminated on 11 August 2015 at the director’s request; the project never entered pre-production and was redirected toward filming in Bosnia and Herzegovina outside the original structure.
Credits
- Aleksandra Odić — Writer-director
- Katharina Diessner — Director of photography
- Matija Radeljak — Producer (Aning Film)
- Daniela Schulz — Co-producer
- Gregor Sauter — Co-producer
- Aning Film d.o.o. — Croatian minority co-production company
- Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb) — Co-production institution
- aug & ohr medien — German partner (Letter of Intent)
Press & links
- Derventa Cafe — regional press mention naming the German-Bosnian project Ljilja odlazi and its child actress
- Regional press mention explicitly referencing the German-Bosnian project "Ljilja odlazi" by Aleksandra Odi?.
Related work: Sofkes Welt