Raindance Film Festival 2026: Ida Who Sang So Badly That Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song

Writers: Ester Ivakic and Nika Jurman

Director: Ester Ivakic

Ida Who Sang So Badly That Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song is the debut feature of Slovenian director Ester Ivakic. In an interview in 2025, Ivakic explained aspects of the film’s structure which clarify what otherwise may seem distinctly opaque to viewers. She and co-writer Nika Jurman apparently based the film round  Noben Glas, nine short stories by Slovenian writer Suzana Tratnik, in each of which Ida, the protagonist, appears at a different age. In the film Ida remains the same age and the only clues about there being different short stories are the titles given to early sections of the film. But after ‘Wind’, ‘Tempest’, ‘River,’ there are no more, so we are left struggling see links or suspecting there simply aren’t any. There is, however, a haunting song which provides a leitmotif. In it, the singer asks what the wind, river and tempest are saying. The film returns frequently to sounds of sighing wind and to snatches of this song. These parts have a certain beauty, but it’s frustrating that the film never quite finds it way to coherence.

Ivakic could really do with a good editor. There’s the tiresomely long title of the film to start with. Then there is her habit of lingering for extended periods over shots in which nothing much happens. As a short hand for “We are inside the mind of a 10-year-old trying to make sense of life,” it outstays its welcome.

Ida herself is played by Lana Maric who brings a quality of stillness and concentration that certainly works well. Other pleasing features are the cinematography. Rok Nagode creates a collage of shots of beautifully unspoiled countryside in what stands in for the former Yugoslavia. There are interesting, if repetitious, soundscapes of wind and chiming bells.

At the heart of the film is Ida’s relationship with her grandmother. Ida is terrified she will die. Spoiler alerts are hardly necessary here. There’s an early scene in a cemetery where Grandma falls down dead after a strange folkloric figure appears. But then the mysterious song is heard and she revives. Ida’s later decision to join the school choir is motivated by her belief that the singing has magic powers. She also invests various religious objects – a cheap statue of the Madonna, various holy pictures and assorted crosses – with magical power. When Ida’s friend, Terezka, shows her how to pray, their petitition to make a hated teacher disappear seems to be heard. The bullying woman is summarily sacked. It’s a particularly poorly developed scene but Ida’s beliefs at least seem justified.

Later in the film Ida’s mother packs and leaves her slob of a husband, taking Ida to friends who run a cool inn somewhere in the mountains frequented by cooler Serbian-speaking visitors. Here Ida is befriended by an older girl and takes pity on a young man whom the locals call Loser. But both characters are again underdeveloped. Stories about children on the brink of adolescence suggest there’ll be some familiar tropes. But at least Ida Who Sang So Badly gets round this by a series of scenes the sense of which remains unclear. At a party – Ivakic is good at 70s’ clothes and embarrassing dance moves – Ida grabs a microphone, and true to form, sings badly. The adults applaud her enthusiastically. Somehow this is a turning point.

Later mother and daughter return to their rural homestead. The end is pretty much inevitable. Ida has somehow come to terms with the idea of death. As she creates a twig cross to commemorate Grandma on warm afternoon, it starts to snow. The final shot of what may or may not be her lost dog running through snowy fields may or may not be a dream. We may not care much.

Ida Who Sang So Badly That Even the Dead Rose Up and Joined Her in Song is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2026 from 17-26 June.