Film Labyrinth of Tesla’s Mind, Produced by Newsmax Balkans, Receives Award at Festival in Las Vegas

What makes this festival particularly inspiring is that it is led by a group of young and passionate Serbian creators working in the American film industry, determined to highlight Tesla’s influence on innovation, imagination, filmmaking, as well as on Serbian-American cultural unity.

Katarina Bucevac, founder of the Nikola Tesla Film Festival, said that this year there were as many as 150 films and that the competition was extremely strong.

"There were ten categories, and as many as two awards are going to our dear Serbia", Bucevac noted.

The festival brings together authors who, like Nikola Tesla, push the boundaries of what is possible. In addition to short and feature-length films, the festival also opens its doors to innovative projects that made use of artificial intelligence in their creation, recognizing new cinematic languages and contemporary tools that are shaping the future of creative expression.

Printscreen: Newsmax Balkans

The main award for Best Film went to Brave Margaret, while awards were also presented for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Film Director.

Bhojraj Harry won the award for Best Actor.

"The Nikola Tesla Festival has done so much. This was the first awards ceremony I attended in per-son, which was phenomenal. Highlighting my film and winning this award has simply given the film a much greater scope for me. I hope it will place it on a platform for other film festivals in the future", he said.

The Best Actress award went to Mari Takahashi.

"I think that for everything I see and touch around me, I can thank him, and I had no idea about that before I came here. So yes, there is still so much to learn about Nikola Tesla, and I am grateful to now be honored in his name", Takahashi emphasized.

Printscreen: Newsmax Balkans

Joseph Charafi, who received the award for Best Film Director, said it was incredible to be part of such an outstanding festival.

"Personally, Nikola Tesla was a hero to me, to be honest. When I learned who he was, what he did, about his life, and how he didn’t end up as an enormously wealthy man – he ended up living alone in an apartment, and his assistant actually saved many of his patents – it was quite astonishing how great a genius he was. But he wasn’t necessarily the smartest when it came to business, because he wanted to help humanity in the most beautiful ways. He was a wonderful person", Charafi under-lined.

At the film festival in Las Vegas, United States, the work of the Newsmax Balkans production was recognized, while their first experimental documentary film, Labyrinth of Tesla’s Mind, received a special commendation.

Printscreen: Newsmax Balkans

The film was created based on the story and screenplay by Prof. Dr. Vladimir B. Pavlovic, who, in addition to the story and script, also conceived the scenographic props and created the digital prints. Directed by the editor of the documentary program of Newsmax Balkans Television, Petar Joncic, the film leads the viewer through the labyrinth of Tesla’s mind, highlighting the importance of ideas that inspire.

The director of photography is Miodrag Trajkovic, while editing and special effects were handled by Dragan Zisic. Among the messages conveyed by the film is Tesla’s enduring influence on con-temporary civilization, as well as his impact on generations to come.

Petar Joncic, editor of the documentary program at Newsmax Balkans Television, explained that when they began working on the film, they followed a concept based on the idea that every scien-tific achievement gives rise to artistic creativity.

Printscreen: Newsmax Balkans

"For someone to create something great in science, they must be an artist – that is, they must think like an artist. That’s where we drew the analogy, because Tesla and his way of thinking – when you listen to or read about him – you realize that his thinking was almost artistic, and that he approached science very creatively, which is why he achieved everything he did. That was our guiding principle in shaping the story. We wanted it to be a combination not only of science, but also of questions such as where science ends and art begins, what is truth, what is falsehood, what is illusion, what is surrealism, what is realism, and so on. We merged all of that into our story, which provokes on a very unusual level, because the central theme is artificial intelligence – namely, Tesla’s influence on the emergence of artificial intelligence, which is rapidly gaining momentum today. In our film, we created a kind of confusion for the viewer, so they are not entirely sure what is true and what is false. We introduced moments where real actors might appear as if they were artificial intelligence", Joncic said.

Through an unusual blend of fairy tale, surrealism, and dance, the film raises questions about the connection between art, imagination, science, and the role of artificial intelligence in creative ex-pression. The path through the labyrinth is paved with Tesla’s quotes and visions, guided by narra-tor Stanko Pevac, a recognizable figure of our television network.

Printscreen: Newsmax Balkans

Relying on elements of childhood fantasy and psychological, philosophical, and social allegory, the film encourages reflection on the mutual relationship between humans and digital technologies, in-cluding artificial intelligence algorithms.

Labyrinth of Tesla’s Mind conveys the message that our world is shaped by digital tools, prompting us to ask what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence, what the future holds, and what lies ahead for children and their education.

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