Until the Day Ends
DUTCH PREMIERE
Set against the backdrop of Serbia’s ongoing protests, an anarchist student and a pro-government young man find themselves fleeing Belgrade together.
Belgrade is a city split in two. In occupied university buildings and crowded streets, twenty-year-old Lena fights for a world she believes can still be changed. Stefan, twenty-two, from the same working-class neighbourhood, is torn between the life he wants and the forces pulling him toward the other side of the protests, where he has landed almost by accident. When a stone is thrown and a police officer is struck, Stefan fears he is to blame, and the two run. Standing on opposite sides of the divide, they recognise in each other a shared restlessness neither can quite name.
Filmed during the real protests, the story unfolds inside actual demonstrations and is played mostly by non-professional actors whose performances carry traces of their own lives.
SCREENINGS
Sunday 8 November 19:00 – closing film
Programme section(s): Closing Film | Out of Focus: Serbia | Cinema Current | Through Women’s Lenses
Original title: Do kraja dana | Year: 2026 | Runtime: 90′
Country: Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Slovenia, Germany, Croatia | Language: Serbian | Subtitles: English
Cast: Lena Trifunović, Andrija Krivokapić, Irina Hotomski, Stefan Tarabić
Director: Jelena Maksimović | Production: Jelena Angelovski – Taurunum Film; PREMIERstudio Plus, Meander Film, Staragara, Kelek Film, Dinaridi Film | Screenplay: Jelena Maksimović, Ivan Salatić, Olga Dimitrijević | Cinematography: Paul Spengemann | Editing: Jan Klemsche
FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
Venice International Film Festival, 2026 – World Premiere (Orizzonti Competition)
DIRECTOR’S BIO
Jelena Maksimović is a Serbian director, film editor, and educator. She holds a Master’s degree from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and has been lecturing at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade since 2015. As a film editor and director, her work has screened at major international film festivals, and she has received numerous awards for her editing. Her creative practice also encompasses music videos and video art, and she regularly teaches at film workshops across the region.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
In 2021, while mentoring a workshop, I met a girl named Lena whose presence awakened vivid memories of my own adolescence. Through her, I caught a glimpse of how my younger self might look and think today. She inspired the fictional protagonist of Until the Day Ends. Growing up in Zemun, a municipality of Belgrade, under the shadow of rigid masculine norms, I longed to escape the roles imposed on me. That discomfort, defiance, and urge to run fuel this story.
The film is set against Serbia’s largest student protests which erupted after the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people. The cast is composed primarily of non-professional actors whose performances carry traces of their own lives. Blending conventions of melodrama, comedy, crime, and road movie, the film forms an elliptical coming-of-age portrait of adolescence and resistance.
