IFFR 2025 review: Wind, Talk To Me (Stefan Djordjevic)

“An extraordinary portrait that manages to shy away from the big gestures of sentimentality and stay grounded in people’s resilience and silent grief.”

At first glance not a lot happens in Stefan Djordjevic’s quiet but beautiful Wind, Talk To Me, but as you sink into the depth of its portrayal of a grieving family, each in their own way, it becomes apparent that the small, seemingly insignificant moments are what lend this film such warmth and the sense of a lived-in experience. What plays a big part in this is that it’s Djordjevic’s own family being portrayed. Initially, Wind, Talk To Me was intended to be a portrait of Djordjevic’s mother, but when she died during filming the director shifted his gaze to his family and to himself, trying to grapple with the death of their mother, daughter, and grandma. Both pain and joy onscreen feel raw and real, and the film retains its documentary roots even if it is labeled as Djordjevic’s fiction debut. A film that finds the human connection in the smallest of gestures, Wind, Talk To Me‘s rhythm is beguiling and oddly comforting in a time where our faith in humanity gets knocked around all too frequently.

On the road to the summer camp where his mother lived, and where his family is celebrating the 80th birthday of his grandmother, Stefan hits a stray dog with his car. As he tries to connect with the hurt animal, it runs away. The scene immediately presents him as a gentle and sensitive soul, and the rest of the film will only strengthen that impression. He does return to the place of the accident later, where he manages to catch the dog in order to give it a loving home. It is one of a series of seemingly uneventful moments, yet they paint a portrait of the humanity of not only Stefan Djordjevic himself, but also his direct family. As he arrives at the camp he is greeted by his brother Boško, with whom he’ll have several moments of reminiscence, before going in to celebrate the family matriarch’s birthday. There is less interaction between Stefan and his grandma, but an intimate conversation that happens late in the film turns into its most touching scene. All ‘characters’ bring up shared memories of his mother, but what affects him the most is when his young nephew finds his mother’s diary. When the dog, christened Lija by Djordjevic and his nephew, rips the diary apart after she is locked into his mother’s caravan, it is the only moment that Stefan shows the depth of anger and frustration at the loss of his mom.

Negrica Djordjevic has left a hole in this family dynamic, but she is not absent from the film. The scenes of the mundane or the deeply felt remembrance are interspersed with scenes from the film Stefan Djordjevic was trying to make, one-on-one interviews in which she teaches him about the qualities of the wind and of nature in general. There are several moments in which Djordjevic himself tries to get in touch with nature, become one with it even, as if trying to get closer to his mother through her wisdom. It is in these videos that the strength of the mother-son bond comes across most poignantly, and where you feel the depth of the son’s love for his mother, and how that love is reciprocated through her playful berating of his failure to understand the importance of the wind and our connection to it. “The wind makes wishes come true,” she says at one point, and if it was Djordjevic’s wish to make a loving portrait of his mother, then he must have finally listened to the wind.

Wind, Talk To Me is an extraordinary portrait that manages to shy away from the big gestures of sentimentality and stay grounded in people’s resilience and silent grief, with moments where a few words or a brief touch are enough to communicate and share sadness with others. It is an incredibly personal work, and Djordjevic is generous enough to let the audience share the warm embrace of his family through this heartfelt film.