„The Healing is a story about the great topic of all our lives in the Balkans region, a story about the process of forgiveness, about times in which one needs to forgive and about the burden of responsibility for someone else’s misdoings that we all carry on our becks. Told in simple and concise film language, through silent and loud communication of two adults and one child, this film fulfills its highly set spiritual and ethical goal: those who had seen it will leave cinema as different people. "
Miljenko Jergovic
CHAIRMAN OF THE JURY FOR THE SERBIAN FILM PROGRAM AT THE BELGRADE’S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL -FEST, IN EXPLANATION OF THE AWARD FOR THE BEST FILM
„One more successful debutant, Ivan Jovic is present in the selection with the excellent film The Healing which had world premiere last year at Cottbus and was then awarded for the best Balkan film at Festival Cinedays in Skopje. Jovic is the author of oneiric, chamber drama which crosses deep introspectiveness and spiritual direction with the topic of interethnic conflict in Kosovo, transiting from the sphere of banal and mundane to the sphere of timeless."
Mladen Djordjevic
DIRECTOR AND FILM SELECTOR AT THE BELGRADE’S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL -FEST
„The Healing fought its place from the sidelines and one could say self-chosen margin to the quality heights of the Serbian 2015 year – it is successful, chamber and (for Serbian terms) unusually quiet, discreet, concise and multilayered debutant film made by life and work partners (Monja Jovic wrote the script and her husband Ivan Jovic directed it). The Healing, among other things, reminded us about everlasting strength of meaningful whisper and to something often suggested – Jovo Maksic is extraordinary actor, and when it happens that wise and brave people give him more significant film minutes."
Zoran Jankovic
FILM CRITIC
„By choosing the most impressive interlocutors who testify about the most shocking episodes of suffering, Jovic puts viewers to the very center of the events so from the first to last moments of the film one feels as eyewitness of the actions that destroyed whole families and villages. Last year, the local audience had the opportunity to see the Oscar-winning Hungarian film Saul's Son, in which the story of Auschwitz crematoria, previously told so many times, is brought in an authentic, different way. Ivan Jović's film Legacy is another successful artistic effort to bravely look into the face of evil, through excellent use of film language and without a shred of compromise, and to touch its essence."
Vule Zuric
WRITER, SCREENWRITTER
„Ivan Jovic’s film Legacy is the most significant film of 2016. This is a film which evokes neither oblivion, nor revenge or numbness, which does not intimidate us but encourages us, does not irritate us but makes us focus, does not humiliate but gives one specific self-confidence based on historical experience of victory over death, and as such we need in our historical moment. Because of it, the importance of the film Legacy is hard to overestimate.
Vladimir Kolaric
DRAMATIST
„It is common to read on monuments that 'communists, anti-fascists and patriots died at the hands of the occupiers and domestic traitors', and innocent people and children were killed only because they were Serbs, Jews or Roma. That simple sentence in the best way devalues the falsified history. And that’s why I am convinced that the film Legacy was very needed. This film is, in fact, that simple sentence, multiplied in the film through the stories of the survivors, a sentence that exposes the Ustasha movement and makes any attempt to distort history meaningless."
Aleksandar Necak
FORMER PRESIDENT OF FEDERATION OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF SERBIA AND CONCENTRATION CAMP SURVIVOR
"The outlines of the light beam that film Legacy creates overlap almost to a millimeter with all our 'gates' - personal and collective traumas. That is exactly why the film Legacy is to all of us what the verses of Anna Akhmatova are to me: Bury me, bury me, wind! - None of my kin had arrived, - Above me, the evening dimmed - And the earth indistinctly sighed."
Sanja Petrovic Todosijevic, PhD
HISTORIAN AT INSTITUTE FOR RECENT HISTORY OF SERBIA
„Film Legacy – The origin of evil and meaning of suffering: you are looking at the change of light and shadows over those martyr’s faces, dear faces, and you are listening to their confessions and realize that they have taken us on the journey towards something which, no matter how horrible, you cannot and you do not want to avoid."
Milos Kovic
HISTORIAN
„God forgives, God does not hate anyone. And what about the man? What about his broken, sad heart and its debris where hatred has settled to follow his footsteps in silence? The debutant feature film by Ivan Jović, which in many ways marked the cinematic year behind us, The Healing opens and rounds to one this and many other questions, in a subtle and entirely honest way. This film has a defined structure and a strong directorial concept, high aesthetic values and strong synergy created by the authors and the protagonists, and it captivates with its spirituality. You don't have to be a believer, Christian, Orthodox to feel it. Simply said, that spirituality is present on the big screen. It is in the content of the story written from the heart by the screenwriter Monja Jović (director Jović's wife), it is in the touch and directorial solutions of Ivan Jović and in the choice of music - the old Byzantine spiritual chant of the Greek Nectaria Karantzi who has angelic voice, and in much more that this film story addresses."
Dubravka Lakic
FILM CRITIC, NEWSPAPER POLITIKA
"I think I know how difficult it was for you to finish film Legacy. And how difficult it is for you still, because a man can never be sure… but as far as I am concerned, you can be calm. More cannot be done with a microphone and a camera. You made your film at the last moment. Just shortly before the disappearance of one world, and the relocation of Jasenovac to ‘post memory remembrance’. And as we know, we do not know to deal with post memory remembrance. For us, everything is oblivion or a myth. And Jasenovac should not be either. There is too much suffering and death, and what has been passed on to us for generations is heavy and too important for Jasenovac to be turned into oblivion and a myth."
Miljenko Jergovic
WRITER