21/08/2026 - Clip director Maja Miloš’s long-awaited follow-up is a transgressive, explicit and violent drama revolving around its female protagonist's sexuality, based on the story of Cinderella

Fourteen years after Maja Miloš's explosive debut, Clip, which won the Tiger Award at IFFR, the Serbian filmmaker is back with No Fairy Dust, which has just world-premiered in the Midnight Screenings strand of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The film, another transgressive, violent and explicitly sexual drama following a young female protagonist, albeit not as accomplished as Clip, is a richer production and a multilayered story that contrasts romantic fairy-tale ideals with the brutally materialistic modern society.

The feature, a retelling of the story of Cinderella, centres on Marija (Jovana Stojiljković), an ice skater in her early twenties who lives in a rural area on the outskirts of Belgrade with her truck-driver father Dragan (Ljubomir Bandović). Both are grieving their recently departed wife and mother. When Dragan finds a girlfriend, Suzana (Nataša Ninković), she soon moves in, from a small town, with her two daughters, roughly Marija's age: Sofija (Milica Tomašević) and Elizabeta (Nikolina Spasić). Eager to see her father happy, Marija agrees to share her room with them, which they shamelessly exploit.

Marija supplements the family income by working at a carwash with her best friend, Nevena (Andjela Jovanović). When Dragan's truck suffers heavy damage from a fire that also engulfs their henhouse, Marija, threatened by Suzana and nudged by Nevena, takes up a more profitable dancing job at a night club. This is how she meets Luka (Marko Grabež), a successful IT entrepreneur and a heartthrob for all the girls around her. Unlike her friends and the two sisters, who become her tormentors – all of them loud, brash and overly sexualised, and always after rich men – Marija is shy and modest, which is exactly what attracts Luka to her.

There is something repressed and almost childish about Marija's sexuality – as painfully shown in an early scene in the locker room – but also about the sexually confusing, scary dreams she has and the visions that haunt her. Miloš expresses this through motifs such as aggressive black birds or fire – unfortunately rendered in unconvincing CGI – but doesn't develop it further. Marija's first sexual encounter with Luka, a tonally uneven scene that is both jarringly direct and awkwardly gentle, contrasts her desires and romantic ideas with modern sensibilities informed by hyper-sexualised media and dating apps.

Marija's character arc and the film's dynamics stem from this contrast between the purity and elegance of the ice rink as well as her blue skating costume, and the sweaty darkness paired with spandex-and-leather outfits that characterises the nightclub. Old videos of Mum with little Marija first getting on her skates are opposed to numerous uncomfortable scenes that extend misogyny and shocking lasciviousness to the impunity of obscenely rich individuals and politicians, where all appearances of decency have been stripped away. Obviously, this points to the society and zeitgeist way beyond the film's local context.

Bookended by Marija's skating routine set to a recurring musical motif – a Yugoslav 1980s hit which is still both popular and cringe-inducing – the film positions Marija as a single pure soul in an otherwise sinister world. In Miloš's abrasive, uncompromising approach, likely to make some audiences more reluctant to watch her work, finding a real human connection in a cynical world is miles away from both corny Hallmark-like fare and gritty arthouse dramas where fierce heroines fight against the patriarchy. And it is Stojiljković's brave, nuanced and dedicated performance that sells the story, nicely compensating for a certain clunkiness in the film on some technical aspects, and some missing character motivations, enough for the whole thing to work. 

No Fairy Dust is a co-production between Baš Čelik (Serbia), Nightswim (Italy), Volya Films (Netherlands), Propeler Film (Croatia), Vertigo and SPOK films (Slovenia), and Quadrifolium Films (Montenegro).