Matea Radic made her directorial debut on Thursday night at the St. John’s Women’s Film Festival, as part of the “Am I the Drama?” late-night shorts program with her film Paradaïz.
Radic’s ten-minute film animates the debris of the past into something uncanny and alive, merging humour and heartbreak in a surreal collage of homecoming. She fled her birthplace as a child in the summer of 1992, but revisits the disrupted Sarajevo in this captivating animation.
The film’s janky, hand-drawn style and pastel palette aren’t flaws, but rather evocative tools, perfectly matching the fragility of Radic’s subject matter. She frames this return as an uneven, nontraditional journey toward healing, one that unfolds in fragments rather than in a straight line, mirroring the way memory and recovery truly work.
Nothing in this world feels quite right: tomatoes swell and pulse in the fridge, slugs crawl toward her as if seeking safety, and a cake sits covered in cigarettes instead of candles. Her childhood home looks like a box with holes — something meant to hold an animal — but she covers the holes with yellow smiley stickers, a small act that feels both tender and sad.
Radic’s decision to strip away dialogue and rely on the rhythm of footsteps and ambient sounds gives Paradaïz an almost meditative quality. It invites the viewer to listen closer, not just to the film, but to their own reactions.
What stands out most is how Radic balances humour and heaviness. The slugs hiding alongside her, the smiley stickers patching up her childhood home, these moments walk the line between absurdity and tenderness, revealing how people sometimes soften pain through playfulness.
The film isn’t just about closure or finding a sense of peace with your past; it’s about learning to live within the in-between. Through her surreal and personal imagery, Radic reminds us that healing is not a straight line but a conversation with the past, one that slips, hides, and resurfaces in unexpected ways.
If Paradaïz is any indication, Radic is an artist to watch, her bold, imaginative approach makes it exciting to see what stories she will explore next.
