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★★★★
Directed by: #NevenRufio
Starring: #AnaBretsnajder, #MilosDjuricic, #MilosTanaskovic, #TaraTanaskovic
Writer and director Neven Rufio tells an intriguing story about love, lose and betrayal with his unconventional short film that must be watched.
The film follows a young girl named Nina (Tara Tanaskovic) and the tragic story of how her once beautiful, simple and peaceful life was changed forever. Throughout the film we come to see that her mother (Ana Bretsnajder) and farther (Milos Djuricic) are not so happy with each other with dense looks at each other and when another man comes into the picture Kovac (Milos Tanaskovic) it all heats up and becomes tense for everyone.
Rufio, (Blue Eyes) made the decision to make this film inaudible and in a result of that it comes with both positives and negatives. The ambition and creative talent to not only make a short film with no speech just sound effects and a score but one that works so well. Even though this is a short film with a limited budget, Rufio’s vision doesn’t seem affected by it and this shows just what talent he has for filmmaking.
The #cinematography can make or break a film and behind the camera for Kingdom Lost: Pale Princess is Predrag Gavrilovic who clearly has a key eye for capturing the stunning visuals for a films purpose. It starts off showing some beautiful shots where the film is located with massive green farming fields. In one shot young Nina runs to her mother and the title comes up on screen and we see the blood-filled title which foreshadows the blood and danger which inevitable follows. The shot here is a beautiful slow wide tracking shot with the hills and mountains perfectly placed in the background. Although this shot is gorgeous it becomes a bit of a go-to-shot and loses what makes it special because of how many times it is used. In a short film the slow wide tracking shots are hard to miss. Which is incredibly annoying because in a feature film of 90 minutes these shots would work perfectly and add something more to the film.
The creative decision to make this without speech and use the actors for their facial expressions and movements really put them to the test on how good of an actor and actress they really are. They performed to the best of their ability and achieved exactly what was set out for them. As a viewer I could understand their body language and expressions to know how they felt. Which for a film with this style is exactly what you need to understand the plot of the film otherwise you would be lost. However, I feel like they could have been used better. I thought they were such professional actors that they could have gone the extra mile and performed even better with speech.
As well as relying on the actor’s performances without speech the other means of sound was the score by Igor Ivkovic. He had to use a range of sounds for Kingdom Lost: Pale Princess from the calm lightly touched piano whilst the trees whistle and Nina runs to her mother. To the beat of drums raining down with the diegetic sound of thunder as the gunshot fires. The tempo and volume of the score tells the audience how they’re supposed to react and feel. Rufio realises that you don’t need speech if you have a quality score because it highlights the good and bad elements for the characters in the narrative for you.
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