Serbian Director’s ‘Everyday Violence’ Drama Explores Normalisation of Peer Aggression at Karlovy Vary
Serbian director Miroslav Terzić's third feature film, "3 Weeks After," premiered in the main competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, centring on a high school trip to Bulgaria. The narrative investigates how violence becomes tolerated and learned within peer relationships, focusing on everyday instances of aggression rather than spectacular incidents. Through this lens, Terzić aims to provoke audiences into examining the mechanisms by which interpersonal violence spreads and normalises itself within communities.
Terzić wrote the script in 2023 during a period when a mass shooting at a Serbian school—his birthplace—coincided with his creative process, lending the film's themes urgent real-world resonance. The director emphasises that conversations about mental health crises, particularly suicide, frequently arrive too late to prevent tragedy, positioning his work as both artistic statement and social intervention. By deliberately crafting a provocation designed not to be easily forgotten, Terzić resists audience indifference and demands sustained engagement with how violence becomes invisible in everyday contexts.
- "3 Weeks After" examines how peer violence normalises within high school communities, competing in Karlovy Vary's main selection
- Director Miroslav Terzić wrote the film in 2023 during an actual Serbian school shooting, infusing fictional narrative with urgent real-world parallels
- The film directly addresses late-intervention suicide conversations in Bulgaria, intentionally provoking audiences to recognise violence they otherwise overlook
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Serbian director Miroslav Terzić has made a new film, "3 Weeks After," which had its premiere in the main competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, one of Europe's longest-running and best-known film festivals. It is Terzić's third feature and follows a group of high school students on a trip to Bulgaria, using their story to look at how bullying and aggression between peers can become normal and go unchallenged.
Terzić wrote the film in 2023, around the time of a mass shooting at a school in Serbia, the country where he was born. That event shaped the film's focus on how violence, including everyday and less visible forms of it, can take hold within a community, and on the difficulty of addressing mental health problems before they turn into a crisis.
The film is significant because it uses a festival platform to draw attention to patterns of peer violence and mental health struggles among young people, issues that have drawn wider public concern following real incidents in Serbia and elsewhere.
Coverage
- Variety — ‘3 Weeks After’ Director on Tackling ‘Everyday’ Peer Violence and Why Conversations About Suicide in Bulgaria Happen Too Late: ‘We Don’t Notice the Fire’
- The Hollywood Reporter — ‘3 Weeks After’ Is a Timely Film About Peer Violence and “Violence Itself, How It Is Learned, Tolerated”