The career of Vojin Vasović, a young director born in Kragujevac in 1985, is at the same time a paradigm of Serbia’s relationship with art and those who consider art a tool for breaking down walls.

After attracting the publics attention with his award winning graduation short film “Dašak,” based on Pirandello’s stories, and his short film “Grupni portret s leđa,” which deals with non-tolerance, Vojin found himself producing a critical film called “Onoga mi krsta.” The film criticizes local city authorities depicted through their erection of a 18-meter cross in Kragujevac. The film, because of (or in spite of) his popularity in social circles, essentially closed the door for his further work in his hometown: “I was summoned to the city councils chambers and told: ‘Give our regards to your mother and don’t count on any more work here.’ I suppose the city authorities expected me to censure the film and then switch my focus from art to politics, naturally favorable to them. I was branded an undesirable artist and essentially ran out of town.” (Vojin’s complete interview – in Serbian).

Vojin didn’t give up. He moved to Toronto, where he recently got a masters degree from experimental theater. In the meantime, he and his small, but brilliant team of coworkers made a new short film, called “5 minutes each.” 2 days ago the film won its thirtieth international award! After winning awards at festivals in Spain, Mexico, Germany, England, Australia and the U.S. , where his last 3 awards were the "Gold Kahuna Award" in the animation category at the "Honolulu Film Awards" festival in Hawaii and audience as well as the jury awards for best animated film at the "The MiX International Short Film Festival” in Richmond (VA).

Those who’ve had the opportunity to see “5 minutes each” confirm that it is a small masterpiece of incredible narration and perfect performance. Here's the films trailer.

Vojin has no intention of giving up, even though he plans to do theater in Canada, he wants to continue making films in Serbia as well, “Despite the walls that need to be torn down,” as he himself puts it. He is currently preparing his first feature-lengthmovie, which is to be coproduced by Canadian “To Blink Studio” and “Bastard Production” from Belgrade. You might remember them by their film “Sonja” which we recently wrote about, here at Heidi.