The 27th Mediterranean Film Festival is screening "The Feast of the Wolf", a documentary film directed by Jadran Boban, in the feature-length documentary competition. We spoke with the director about wolves, conspiracy theories, abandoned places, traces of war, and people trying to understand a world that seems to have long since left them behind.

Honestly speaking, I find it difficult to feel an emotional connection to the film now. It seems to me that I exhausted all my emotional energy during the six or seven years we spent working on it. However, I am satisfied knowing for certain that it was worth it, and that there is an audience out there that will watch the film. It clearly possesses a universal value that is recognised by people from Northern Europe all the way to the far south. The film’s journey continues; it will soon be screened at a major European festival.

Yes, it's fascinating that you can go from the Adriatic beaches full of tourists from all over Europe, in just a twenty-minute drive, to a completely different world. From a postcard of European tourism into an archaic and neglected area, an area almost on the edge of today's European Union. This contrast is captured in the film, which opens with scenes of tourists at the stunning location where the Zrmanja River flows into the sea and concludes with one of the protagonists arriving at a beach in Biograd, a place where he clearly does not belong.

From the very beginning of working on the film, screenwriter Dragan Grozdanić and I decided that we would not deal with debunking conspiracy theories. I don't think it is our place to pass judgment or take a stance. At times, we ourselves wondered what the truth was, given the very convincing stories we heard about wolves being dropped from helicopters. However, I never felt the need to use the film to debunk that conspiracy theory, because disproving it isn't what matters here. I’ll let the viewers decide for themselves what is really going on.

The wolf here represents everything that threatens and frightens people, all those forces beyond their control. This film is a story about the powerful and the powerless, whether that power lies with states and empires throughout history, war profiteers, conflicts, or natural phenomena. Conspiracy theories are, in fact, the result of a sense of powerlessness and a fear of the unknown, an inability to control one’s own life. In their relationship with nature, humans long ago created some methods of "negotiation" through various rituals and rules of engagement, something we sought to illustrate in the film. But when it comes to those who have social power, this relationship is far more difficult and dangerous.

There are always some facts behind every good conspiracy theory. It is just that the interpretation is, to put it mildly, imaginative. The same applies here. Not far away, in Zemunik, there is a helicopter base. The helicopters are constantly flying and descending into the rocky terrain. Wolves are present here too, and their numbers are growing. As experts have explained, the construction of the highway disrupted their natural migratory paths, and with villages being abandoned, wild animals are increasingly venturing down from Mount Velebit. It is easy to dismiss those who believe in such theories, or to label them as stupid or uneducated. However, I believe people should always be listened to. Only then can one see how much fear, mistrust, and social, economic, and life problems they have. What drew me to make this film was, in fact, a seeming paradox. Namely, I found it interesting how people try to rationalise their own lives and find an explanation for the conditions they find themselves in, in this forgotten space where villages are deserted, there are fewer and fewer people, and there is no basic infrastructure such as doctors or public transportation. Yet, they do this through the irrational, through the wolf, a creature bordering on the mythical, the subject of countless folk songs and tales. The wolf is the one that lurks in the darkness.

We recently screened the film in Benkovac, and some of the protagonists were present. What surprised me was that quite a few people, not just the protagonists, told me they were deeply moved by the film. As they put it, they live those lives every day, yet they never see them "from the outside", framed and depicted the way they are within a film shot.

It was important to me that the presence of war be felt in the film, because it, or rather, its consequences, remains very much present today. After all, the social reality and the state of neglect in that region are largely a result of the war. However, I did not want to delve into the specific details; here, the war acts as a "wolf“, a force that has ravaged lives, just as past wars in the region have done since the time of the Turks. Traces of this are visible in the film, and it is up to the viewers to interpret them.

I must admit that even I do not know what led me to frequently focus on people and places on the margins. I wouldn't say I have any particular affinity for them. It is possible that it all started by chance, and then I was drawn in by human stories and a world I didn't know enough about. Underlying it all is a burning sense of injustice, something I have felt for a long time. In fact, I believe that a sense of injustice is one of the key motivators of human action, whether for good or for evil.

The film's screenwriter and I often went to Bukovica and Ravni Kotari before filming, looking for stories and characters. Even then, I had a strong sense of a surreal reality and a unique aura surrounding the landscape. This is the exact feeling I wanted to capture in the film. On the other hand, this area is full of surreal stories and myths about magical phenomena and beings. This has been the case for centuries and remains so today. There are even scholarly works exploring the beliefs regarding the supernatural in these areas. Thus, the film’s atmosphere stems from both my own subjective impressions and the multitude of extraordinary stories one hears after spending enough time there.

The story itself about the wolves being introduced is absurd in itself, but I didn't want to turn it into a grotesque spectacle or mere entertainment, which would have been very easy to do. That would have been condescending and dishonest toward the people who participated in the film. Or, say, create an exotic story that would sell well in the "West". I think we managed to balance and dose those humorous moments well, without straying into exploitation. That likely makes the film easier to watch, as it isn't the sort of movie that’s a struggle to sit through for its entire ninety-minute runtime.

The film’s title was inspired by Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel “The Feast of the Goat”, although it is not connected to it. Yet, much like in the novel, which also explores the relationship between the powerful and the powerless, the "feast” consists of the very people who fall victim to the insatiable, predatory nature of those who hold power.

In an earlier conversation, you mentioned that through your films you were trying to understand your own relationship with the war and everything it left behind. When you look at “The Feast of the Wolf” today, do you feel that you finally understood something through that film, or did you simply discover a new question?

The way I experience working on the films I make is as part of my own life, and when you consider how long the filming takes, that's exactly how it is. This is where I struggle with myself and with my understanding and relationship to reality. I often get wounded along the way, yet even more frequently, I discover something about the world around me and about myself. That is how I grow, find my own balance, and expand both my knowledge and my personal world. Naturally, new questions always arise, questions I would love to answer. On the other hand, there is a certain allure to the fact that there are no definitive answers. These are, in all likelihood, the primary reasons why I make films.