After premiering his feature debut Mañana Sol at DOK.fest Munich in 2024, prolific German producer/director Denis Pavlovic is now screening the film on the Doc Around Europe VOD platform. In addition, the prolific filmmaker has three further works in the pipeline.
The Mountain Has Fallen (produced Pavlovic and partner Julia Meyer-Pavlovic and directed by Thomas Oswald) competes for a DOK.composition Award at DOK.fest Munich 2025. As director/producer, Pavlovic is raising finance on the feature doc Hidden Lines: A Life with Scoliosis, optioned by SWR, and is further raising finance on the feature doc A Land That Time Forgot.
Mañana Sol has a very personal undertow in telling the story of Pavlovic’s estranged parents, living on two separate islands in the Canaries.
Thirty-five years ago, Jadranka and Aleksandar Pavlovic met there, fell in love, made a subsequent life together in Germany and returned to the Canary Islands for an idyllic retirement. But boredom and illness kicked in, and they eventually split. Jadranka lives on Gran Canaria where she runs a bar. Aleksandar lives on Tenerife dealing with ailing health, and somewhat of an aching heart.
Mañana Sol tells a bittersweet tale, with visuals that at times evoke the photography of Martin Parr. Aleksandar calls and leaves messages all the time, which Jadranka pointedly ignores. “I prefer to keep my sanity so I close off my heart,” she says at one point. She is still very attractive and keeps herself fit. He is frail but he is desperate to go diving again, an idea that she mocks. On her birthday, he takes a ferry to see her, and even proposes a reconciliation. She listens and the atmosphere is cordial, but she doesn’t entertain the idea for long.
The film is funny and very touching, and offers an extended snapshot of two vulnerable parents at a melancholy time of life. (That said, director Pavlovic hints that a happy ending may have ensued after his camera stopped rolling.)
Despite it being a film about his parents, Pavlovic himself doesn’t make an appearance. The only hint we are given as to the father/mother/son relationship is an early caption that gives Jadranka and Aleksandar’s full names. Did he regret not being part of the story?
“I can go back to discussions in our studies that I had with my mentors, because a very tough [but] clear decision had to be made,” he explains. “Do I see them as my parents or do I see them as protagonists? When I see them as my parents, then I would have been in the film totally. If I see them as protagonists, then I won’t.”
“To be honest, seeing it today, I love the film as it is, but now I would actually put myself into the film,” he concedes. “It’s clean and very straightforward as it is, but I would actually love to have this [personal] perception in the film. It would add another piece of the story, I would say.”
On the eve of Munich 2025, the film was snapped up for the Doc Around Europe platform, dedicated to supporting and promoting European documentaries by emerging filmmakers, and to help them connect to audiences and the international market alike. The platform is an initiative of network members DocsBarcelona, DOK.fest München, MakeDox, FIPADOC, VERZIÓ and Biografilm.
At the same time, the film’s soundtrack, written by Christian Bluthardt, Yvy Pop, Marvin Gerstmeier was also released via ALLSCORE MEDIA across digital platforms.
“Music, not just in fiction, even in documentary, is such a major storytelling tool to use. For me, music is not just setting a tone. It is even telling a major part of the story itself. Even here with the first track you hear in the film, Yvy Pop, who is working very close with Christian all the time, sets the narration and tells you already what this film will be about – all in the first two minutes.”
In the meantime, Pavlovic and partner Julia Meyer-Pavlovic, are together producing the feature doc The Mountain Has Fallen, directed by Thomas Oswald, which competes for a DOK.composition Award at DOK.fest Munich 2025.
For more than 17 years, the German-Bulgarian musician Lisa Morgenstern, who supplied the score for The Mountain Has Fallen, had not returned to her homeland of Bulgaria. The pain and shame of having broken off contact with her now-deceased grandmother during her teenage years were too great. But when Lisa’s booker informs her of an invitation to a festival in Sofia, she gathers her courage. This marks the beginning of a musical journey of discovery through her country, and recordings of nearly forgotten songs and work on a new album bring Lisa back to her own roots and opens up her future as an internationally recognized musician. But the road to get there, through her past, is still a difficult one…
Additionally, the feature doc A Life with Scoliosis, optioned by SWR and produced/directed by Pavlovic, follows the daily clinical life in Germany’s most renowned scoliosis rehabilitation clinic ‘Bad Sobernheim’ and portrays the stories of five different people united by one thing – the pursuit of a normal life.
For A Land That Time Forgot, on which Pavlovic is in negotiations with a leading European sales company, he embarks on a journey into “a modern Soviet reality,” following two of the largest tourist agencies in the globally unrecognized Moldovan region of Transnistria. Here they strive to develop a holiday paradise in one of the least-visited areas in Europe. “An amusing and thought-provoking tale of one agency trying to modernize its business model for the future while the other goes all-in, aiming to become a tourist franchise. In between, the film crew is wondering, what is going on?” Pavlovic signs off.
