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Sonja

Sonja is a poetic portrayal of the story of the sightless potter Sona Zeliskova, who despite adverse fate found her life yourney in art and ceramics.

The film experiments with audio-visual components to recount Sonya's unique story. Combining a documentary, narrative and poetic approach, this short film attempts to denounce the real life story via poetic language.

Director Maroš Milčík and cameraman Gašper Šnuder used special infrared technology, in order to achieve a surrealistic black-and-white visual. The unique picture thus emerged purely in-camera without the use of post-production.

Sonya carries an one-of-a-kind story of a lifetime struggle, overcoming obstacles and love for art. At the age of 13, she was diagnosed with diabetes. At 26, right by the birth of her son, she completely lost her sight. At age of 39, nevertheless, she has found her life purpose and passion in ceramics and became a successful artist. Today, Sona runs ceramics courses, lectures at conferences and has become a life inspiration for others.

  • Maroš Milčík
    Director
  • Gašper Šnuderl
    Director of Photography
  • Matúš Široký
    Composer
  • Sonja
    Key Cast
    "Soňa Zelisková"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    poem, documentary, drama, abstract, experimental
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 15, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Slovakia
  • Country of Filming:
    Slovakia
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    RED
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:35:1
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Maroš Milčík

Maros is a young self-taught film-maker, who works within central Europe. His passion started becoming a profession already during high school years, while he worked on several VFX projects. Based on the quality of his work, he got hired as a Motion designer by one of the leading advertising agencies in Slovakia. After five years of work as a Design Team leader, he still felt drawn to filmmaking.

During the few years of firmly establishing his name within the country, Maros has directed commercial spots for top regional brands and advertising agencies, such as Erste Group, ČSOB, Becherovka, Orange, to name a few.

Besides commercial jobs, Maros invests a lot of his focus into passion projects, where he can develop his creative potential, unrestrained by customer needs. He is currently simultaneously working on short documentary series, combining the eye-catching audio-visual techniques with the power of story-telling.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

By the end of 2016, I was looking for inspirational stories by craftsmen and artists from Slovakia to create a documentary series of short films. My friend Juraj Vozar told me a story about Sonya, who immediately grabbed my heart. Our team has not managed to get funding to shoot the original documentary series, but I did not want Sonya’s story to remain unspoken.

After several interviews with Sonya, I decided to shoot the story in a short form and in my own film language.
The visual approach was chosen and created during endless discussions between me and the cameraman Gašper Šnuderl, at the end of which we came to the conclusion that we will shoot some parts of the film with special infrared technology.

In order to build this unique visual approach, I have spent a lot of free time touring the outdoor locations across Slovakia. Since infrared technology is specific and I did not have the opportunity to see locations through infrared technology during the scouting tours, I decided to choose the surroundings of my hometown of Banská Bystirka in Slovakia, where I have the best knowledge of locations.

The resulting image in the “infrared world” directly depends on the intensity of the sun's radiation, so it has to be improvised to appropriate locations, as the weather changed. Only thanks to the persistence and willingness of our great crew, the story was able to be shot in 4 days.