This year at the 51st Salonica film festival, The Match Factory represented film Cirkus Columbia (2010) makes a stop in the 'Balkan Survey' category. This film has now toured all the major festivals this year, proving a favorite of filmgoers everywhere. Below is my interview with main actress from the film, Jelena Stupljanin.

Actress Jelena Stupljanin speaks about her new film Cirkus Columbia, a Bosian film by Bosnian Oscar winner director Danis Tanovic, set in the former Yugoslavia.

me: Can you tell me about Cirkus Columbia and what your film is about? And what is your role in the film?

Jelena Stupljanin: "'Cicus Columbia' is a love story set in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 90's just before the war in Bosnia started. The story follows Divko (played by Miki Manojlovic) who comes back after 20 years from Germany to his small village in Herzegovina with a lots of money, new car, fancy suit and a young wife (played by myself:)
The first thing he does is kick out his former wife( played by Mira Furlan) from his old house because he believes that she never wanted to follow him 20 years ago when he had to leave the village for the political reasons...
He never wrote to her, never called her, never seemed to want to know anything about her.
What he finds out when he comes back is that she raised him a son, who is now 20 years old, a young men, very much like Divko himself (played by Boris Ler) and the true reason why his former wife never followed after him to Germany...."

me: And what will you do now that you are finished with Cirkus?

Jelena Stupljanin:  "After the Sarajevo Film Festival and the premier of the movie I will come back to NYC to do couple of very exciting theater projects in the Fall. One of them is a solo performance piece written by a contemporary American playwrite and a poet Allan Graubard. The other one is a Serbian play by legendary Branislav Nusic 'The Berieved Family'"

Watch out for Jelena in the future. She is all over the map, taking over the silver screen and the stage! :-)

written by, Vanessa McMahon