Two days before the wedding the bride said she is not going to do it. When the
families realize she is not joking, all hell broke loose. It is way too late to cancel.
Everything is ready: the guests, the gifts, the musicians, and the prosciuttos. Entire
peninsula knows about it.
The bride can’t explain it. It is complicated. It is not just the village where she is
supposed to spend the rest of her life. It is not the groom who feels like a
compromise (she knows everyone would be to an extent). It is not her failed
ambitions. It is the overwhelming feeling that this life is unique, and that key
decisions might ruin the only chance one gets in this universe.
Her potential father in law, Leso has no doubt in his mind. His merciless and brutal
nature will push both the bride and the groom into it. They will not play with his
honor. He offers this – do the bloody wedding. Act it out. And then go wherever you
want the next day. They accept.
A traditional wedding on the peninsula includes a series of illogical, awkward and
absurd steps, soaked with alcohol and accompanied with cheesy music, gunfire and
dynamite (villagers play with homemade dynamite, usually made for illegal fishing).
But none of the celebratory detonations can compare to the panic attack implosions
that each one of the characters goes through during that day.
Ridden by guilt and tormented by doubts, she will have to go through this hellish
day and come to terms with what she wants from life. And every possibility she has,
in the end, feels like a heavy compromise.

Wrote and directed several short student films and other exercises over the period of studying at FAMU: The Confession (2008), A Football Story (2009), Recurrence (2011) Won Crossroads award on 50th Thessaloniki film festival’s market, for his first feature screenplay PASQUA (2009 His first documentary project “PRAISE THE SEA, STICK TO THE SHORE” placed second on Supetar Super film festival in Croatia.
His feature debut project “THE BLACK PIN” got selected for Script Station program on 63rd edition of Berlinale – International film festival in Berlin, Germany. In April of 2013 the project won the first prize on national film concourse in Montenegro. In 2014 was selected for Jerusalem film lab (JFL) where it won 2nd award for best screenplay. Later that year the screenplay was awarded also on Cinelink (Sarajevo Film Festival). The film premiered in Official Competition of 22nd Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2016.
The Black Pin was chosen as a Montenegrin Oscar Candidate for 2016.
Founder of the Independent film company ADRIATIC WESTERN in Montenegro, with aim to produce and develop projects of new coming Southeast European talents. The Black Pin is the company’s first feature project.
In 2018 Ivan became a member of EFA – European Film Academy. He is the first (and only so far) director from Montenegro to become an EFA member.
Thanks to the success of THE BLACK PIN Ivan got invited into the writer’s room of HBO’s THE ISLAND (OTOK/OSTRVO) – An in development HBO drama for Adria region where he collaborates with headwriter Ivan Knežević, co-writer Mile Božićević, and head of development Ana Balentović.
He became the programmer for feature films of the Montenegro Film Festival in Herceg Novi, which is an International Film Festival of National Importance. Ivan significantly changed the concept of the festival, with a plan to open it up to the world, and to turn it into one of the most important regional summer festival experiences.