Tara Gajović’s Over the Threshold — a graduation short with startling cinematography

Tara Gajović is a young Serbian director the Sarajevo Film Festival put on our radar this year. According to Directors Notes, Gajović is 26 and made Over the Threshold as her graduation short at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade.

The film runs about 15 minutes and follows a newlywed couple who sneak away from the formalities of their wedding to talk about their future. Directors Notes frames the piece as simple in premise but sophisticated in execution: it "places it firmly within the specific geographical and social context of Serbia," using production design and camera work to do most of the storytelling.

"Presented at Cannes as part of the La Cinef competition, this is undoubtedly one of the films with the most striking cinematography in the programme."

Directors Notes also describes the short as "impeccably flawless, also in terms of its set design," crediting the film’s visual choices for much of its power. Those details suggest a director who thinks like a designer — arranging space and light so that small gestures and glances carry the weight of larger cultural questions.

What feels important about Gajović’s work is the confidence of a student film that already reads like the beginning of an auteurial voice: intimate scenes, crisp framing, and an attention to local texture that makes the story feel both personal and socially specific.

Directors Notes reports the film screened in Sarajevo’s Student Films section after a Cannes presentation. For more on this selection and similar shorts, see Directors Notes’ Best of Fest collections.