Speleonaut / Under The Stone Sky

As long as I can remember, I have had the need to be alone sometimes. One of my earliest memories relates to the enjoyment of observation: watching children play from the floor of my grandmother’s balcony. And in recent years my need for lengthy periods spent in nature has become almost physical. This is why, I presume, the forgotten news story of a loner who spent 15 months in a cave half a century ago led me to be persistent in the search for his book of diary entries entitled “Under the Stone Sky“, although it was unavailable at libraries at the time. Even the first contact was exciting: long-bearded face on the front cover, and hand-written inscription: ’’I dedicate this book to explorers who have burned away on the border of the Unknown.“ I felt this was an invitation.
The shooting was a real adventure: the darkness, the dampness, the cold and the constant roaring of the underground river, which was almost impossible to avoid throughout the main corridor approximately two kilometers long. Thus, soaked to the skin, we have had a chance to experience just a small part of what the film's main protagonist went through in there.
Our focus was to capture different faces and the raw magnificence of the unarranged Samar cave. The camera is mostly static or panning very slowly, in the rhythm of forever. The only light existing is the led from the speleologist’s helmet, and often the big part of the composition is plain darkness. An equally great challenge was HOW to tell a story of this event - an exciting and uncertain feat for the scientific and wider community at the time, and for the main protagonist - an introspective dive into his own self, which is reborn and rediscovered due to the lack of sensations.
The decision to make the film in two acts - from “the outside” and “the inside” perspective is the result of a long creative process, and trying to find answers to the following questions: How can we recreate different aspects of the cave which Milutin had experienced, as described in the book? How is it possible to transfer a world deprived of senses to film, especially to present-day viewers used to constant, pronounced stimulation? In an age of individualism, how can we materialise the spirit of planetary curiosity for collective achievements of humankind?
Watering a tree every day, doing anything with unshakeable perseverance - is one of the thoughts from the silver screen which has reached the depths of my being and has been inscribed into my heart as a sacred task. I recognised the reflexes of this “Sacrifice”, in order to reach for the bigger and greater, in the protagonist's aim to delve into the difficult and undiscovered, into a night without day, into a night darker and longer than any night above the ground.