Verovatno,
Nikad Više

ON BLACK.

Waves crashing. Over, and over.

The roar increases, rages, it nears.

Also from afar, we distinguish two people, their muffled voices come to us as the sound of waves crashing do. They too become clearer, louder, angrier.

YASEN

No-- No, no, no. Every time, e-- every FUCKING TIME you're confronted with an opinion that's not yours--

ISKRA

Oh, come on... why don't you just shut up. SHUT UP. For once... spare me, please.

YASEN

See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You just run away... you do, and you know why?

ISKRA

Oh yeah? Please tell--

YASEN

(interrupting her)

--cause you're a quitter...

Sporadic notes of a piano fall all around us. From this point on, we see the slowest fade in from black, lethargically revealing the waves crashing against the rocks. It is as though we refuse to open our eyes, afraid of what we may discover.

ISKRA

Sure, I'm a quitter.

YASEN

A pathetic and selfish quitter that is terrified of giving a fuck about anyone but herself.

ISKRA

Me? Selfish me? I'm sorry, did you leave college for me or was that another thing I imagined?

YASEN

You hated school, you hated your family, your life. You wanted to leave. I just happened to be there when you needed a way out.

ISKRA

And I just happened to be there when your music sucked. Over and over. You'd cry on my lap every night... and then you quit.

YASEN

I worked hard. I did try, unlike you. It was not a game for me.

ISKRA

Oh fuck off, you hypocrite. You quit on your own mother.

YASEN

Fuck you, you don't get to talk about my mother.

ISKRA

Grow the fuck up. I took care of her while you were away. You couldn't even look at her in the eye. If you were half the man you say you are, she'd still be alive.

YASEN

Shut your fucking mouth. You are nothing like her. You can't even be a mother.

SILENCE. Only rocks against incoming waves.

ON SCREEN TITLE: Verovatno, Nikad Više.

INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY

The place where the fight had just taken place. It's like we blinked and now here we are, observing the aftermath.

A distant piano sprinkles notes here and there. From a distance we see them both, frozen, a staring contest, just a few steps from each other.

ISKRA (25), a woman of innate beauty. Young, yet exuding the strength and maturity of someone who's been forced to grow up faster than anyone around her. She wears sweatpants and a simple top. She holds a kitchen spatula in her right hand.

YASEN (38), a man of warm manners. Has the demeanor of someone who's lost a lot in life. His eyes speak of days gone and his words sound like a white flag. He's just come out of the shower, his hair is still wet.

Over the shoulder we see how they process what had just been said. One at a time we stare into their faces and try to identify the cocktail of emotions hidden behind their panting breathing.

She's in disbelief, fuming and whimpering. He tries to own the anger that abandons him. Another look from afar and as if coordinated: the standoff is over and they storm out in opposite directions.

The screen has split in top and bottom, each half following one of the characters going into a room away from the other.

Both doors are slammed in unison.

EXT. OCEAN - DAY

A wide view of the ocean. Pure, at rest.

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

She paces uncontrollably, desperate, holding her mouth tight, as if she was afraid of being discovered by a monster lurking outside the room.

With her mouth clasped still, her nose starts to violently grasp for air, faster and faster, until the oxygen starvation builds up and a tear is released as a white flag would in old times of war. She plummets onto the floor, and with her back against the bed, she quietly cries her pain out.

EXT. GARDEN - DAY

A flower, a plant. A subtle breeze makes it dance.

INT. BATHROOM - DAY

Yasen is a statue clawing the side of the sink with both hands. His head is down and unmoving. We wonder if he's still breathing at all. We walk up closer from behind his shoulder.

He tries to look up, but the mirror will tell him of his own eyes and all the pain and shame that hides within him.

His face twitches with anger and frustration.

But even before he manages to raise his eyes onto the mirror, he catches a glimpse of his distorted reflection on the sink tap. He burns from within, all the anger comes rushing and his fist pounds the wall, millimeters away from the mirror.

Along with the thud of his fist hitting the wall, a high pitch tone overwhelms us and the screen goes to white.

INT. BEDROOM - MORNING

From white we fade into sheer curtains. The wind through them and how it sways them.

The room is peaceful, still. Iskra's body is partially covered by the bedsheets, asleep. She moves slightly, turns onto her back and we lock on her face, getting closer and closer.

We soon enough are looking at her eyes and still zooming in. Restless, they shake side to side. And when all we see is one eye, it opens all of a sudden, and in it, we see the memory of times past.

Like a projection, a scene is visible on her iris. We keep zooming in and suddenly leave Iskra behind. The scene is--

EXT. BEACH/BALCONY - DAY

--sand, and the waves caressing it. Now we zoom out to fully observe the beach and as we do and from a corner of the frame, Iskra and Yasen appear walking side by side, holding hands.

The zoom out continues until the couple occupy a small place on the screen. We then discover Yasen sitting on the sand watching the scene as a memory.

The zoom out continues, as we watch Yasen getting smaller we see how Iskra stands on the balcony of the house, watching out to the beach, where Yasen sits on his own.

Iskra turns around and enters--

INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY

--the living room. Frantically rummaging through drawers, flipping through magazines and envelopes. She walks in front of Yasen who's quietly doodling on a sketch book, unbothered.

She steps over his legs as if he was just another piece of furniture in the house. She bumps his sketchbook and he looks at her but she keeps on moving. Opening and closing drawers as if she was looking for a ticking bomb she needs to defuse.

And suddenly she finds it: her passport. Triumphantly she takes it and moves into the--

INT. BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS

bedroom. Here she rampages through her closet, shoving and crumpling an assortment of colors and non-matching clothing articles until the bag feels full.

Standing up straight, she looks around the room like a meerkat would upon hearing a distant eagle. She examines the room's four walls and returns to the--

INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS

living room. She beelines for the front door and as she's about to grab the handle, she's startled by a thought: it seems like she'll say something, but she stops.

She rushes back towards the back of the room and her body temporarily blocks our view revealing--

INT. DINING TABLE - DAY

A tabletop. A simple bowl of soaked oat flakes and what seems to be dried fruits. Not a breakfast that says "I love myself".

We pull back and we see Yasen sitting there, playing with his food. He looks out of the window when Iskra joins him. Her plate is a much richer display of various colors.

She sits across from him but they don't even look at each other. Soon after he simply stands up, taking his unfinished bowl of oats towards the sink.

He disappears slowly like a ghost would fade, leaving her sitting all by herself. Maybe he was never there after all.

Her eyes are fixed on something distant outside the window.

Our eyes go from her face into whatever she's staring at, but we don't see anything, the scene starts to dissipate and blend with--

INT. LIVING ROOM - DUSK

Yasen's doodling. At first is a line but as we zoom out we see the page is almost full of a similar repeating pattern and he continues drawing.

And then: a burst of anger takes over him. He ruins his drawings with furious lines that end up tearing the page.

He drops the sketchbook. He breaks down. Alone, witnessed by the single light of a lamp.

From a distance we can see him stare at the floor, motionless. And he just stays there.

From the far back of the room and slightly out of focus we notice a painting (have we seen it before? — we wonder). The image is of a woman, an older one.

Yasen covers his face with his hands. He starts to cry. That's when we realize: the painting's moving, the woman is out of the frame.

And she gets very close to him. She creeps up to him, she embraces him. With a motherly hug she comforts him and he throws his arms around her as a baby who wants to be picked up.

They stay there in that embrace.

INT. BEDROOM - MORNING

Iskra is back in bed, or maybe still is from before, we can't really tell. From the side we can see her eyes are open but she does not move, or better said she cannot move. She seems to want to scream and run away but she's a prisoner in her own brain.

It's like she's having a sleep paralysis episode with her eyes open.

And then the lights go down, it all turns to night in a second. A loud buzz overwhelms us, something's definitely wrong.

The house lights blink and flicker, like a warning sign, they try to warn us about something we can't understand.

INT. SEVERAL CORNERS OF THE HOUSE (SEQUENCE) - CONTINUOUS

From a wider angle we see how Yasen and the mysterious woman are locked still, but the walls have changed: projections of sweeter moments between Iskra and Yasen populate corners of the living room.

In the bathroom the shower holds a memory (them cuddling and watching a movie).

In the bedroom the closet holds a memory (them laughing at a candle lit dinner).

In the kitchen, the stove holds a memory (their bodies making love — from a possible future).

We go back to the living room where Yasen and the mysterious woman hug and rock back and forth. The scene blends with the next one as if turning into a projection itself. We're transported to--

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

the kitchen. Iskra does the dishes after her breakfast. We can see how she purposefully avoids washing the bowl that Yasen had left. She leaves her clean dishes in the drying rack and goes to--

INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY/NIGHT

*the following scene will use a trick of lighting switching from setup 1 to setup 2 in order to seamlessly jump from one character's perspective to the other*

the living room where Yasen is folding the blanket he had used the night before to make a bed out of the couch.

She looks at him stack the blankets neatly onto the couch. She does not move, she stays there as if hoping for him to notice her.

But he does not see her. He seems to be stuck in the projections version of this room. She's just not there when he looks up. The lights change when we look from his perspective. Projections are still there. He's just alone with the memories.

Still hoping to be noticed, she deliberately pushes the blanket stack off the couch. But nothing.

On his perspective, the blankets fall on their own — she's just not there.

She's visibly frustrated. She storms through a doorway where--

INT. DARK ROOM - NIGHT

suddenly the day has turned to night for her past the doorframe. The room is empty with the exception of a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and an empty chair.

Iskra reacts to the chair. It seems like the chair has so much to say to her, as if it knew all her innermost secrets and deepest darkest thoughts. Menacingly, the chair stands in front of her.

She walks up, defiantly at first. But then she is no longer able to withstand the power of the chair. She crumbles and loses control of her emotions.

She covers her mouth in an attempt to prevent herself from screaming, but she's not that strong — her instincts tell her to rip her own throat with a scream in hopes to scare the chair away.

We close up to her eyes. With her hands still holding her mouth she prepares to scream but then something hits her, a dreadful realization that takes over her skin and implants itself in her core as the most primal fear she could experience. Her eyes widen and the bulb above blows up, leaving us with a flash that engulfs the screen in light.

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

White. For a long time we only see white. Only after a few seconds we distinguish certain shapes, a shadow here and there tells us of moving objects. We don't know what or who just yet.

As the white dissipates, we stay in high key, watching how parts of bodies mingle slowly. First is feet, then an elbow around a waist. The minute hairs of someone's skin, lips slowly opening.

It's them. Iskra and Yasen. They are in bed. They make love, they are like one. We only see from up close certain details of their bodies' interactions. We know from this, that it's a profound connection they are sharing.

She's on her back now. We stay with her face. Her eyes are long lost somewhere past the ceiling, like watching over the moon somewhere out there. They near climax. She arches back. In her mind (and we see this) a chair sits alone at the beach.

EXT. BEACH - DAY

A chair sits alone in the sand. The waves wash its legs over and over.

INT. BEDROOM/LIVING ROOM/BALCONY - MORNING

From white we fade into sheer curtains. The wind through them and how it sways them.

The room is peaceful, still. Iskra's body is partially covered by the bedsheets, asleep. She moves slightly, turns onto her back and we lock on her face, getting closer and closer.

We soon enough are looking at her eyes and still zooming in. Restless, they shake side to side. And when all we see is one eye, it opens all of a sudden, but this time, there is no projection in it.

A wider look at the room shows us the aftermath of what she fears. Yasen's clothes are on the floor, yet he's nowhere to be found in the room.

Incorporating herself slowly. She delicately covers her shoulders with a bathrobe.

Walking out of the room and passing through the living room she walks out to the balcony. From there, she can see how Yasen has been sitting on the sand as if watching a memory.

EXT. BEACH - CONTINUOUS

We stay with Yasen, sitting on the sand.

After a few moments of quiet contemplating, he notices Iskra passing by his side. She wears the robe she threw on in the bedroom.

She keeps walking towards the water, and before her feet first touch the edge, she drops the robe.

And walks in, steadily.

We watch Yasen allow her to fully disappear into the water.

I./E. UNDERWATER - MOMENTS LATER

Underwater Iskra is nothing but raw pain. She crawls into a fetal position and stays there all small, all vulnerable. All alone.

We slowly fade to black as the sound of the waves take over.

INT. BALCONY - SUNSET

Shivering and with her hair still wet, Iskra sits on the balcony cocooned in a blanket. Her face turned to the sea.

In front of her, on a small table sits an ashtray and a lit but untouched cigarette. The climbing smoke is entrancing. And suddenly, a folder is dropped next to it, perturbing the smoke.

We are taken aback and so is Iskra. It was Yasen who threw it there for her to see, but he's already walked away. She's alone again in the balcony, just that now she has this folder in front of her.

Taking one hand from under her blanket she slowly opens the cover. As she does this, our screen divides into two, the other half is occupied by Yasen's hand holding the living room's door handle.

We now read what Iskra discovers in that folder: the house, this very beach house, is now hers. It's the deed to this house under her name.

She's in shock, she sits up and turns to him, but he's already opened the door. He's packed a bag even, she realizes.

From as far as we can we look at them. A staring contest all over again.

Split screen, we compare their eyes, and then their mouths. We go back for an instant to the wider view of them, at the corners of the frame, looking at each other.

Frozen they stay there.

Their eyes again, their mouths tremble.

When it looks like they will break the silence we--

CUT BACK TO BLACK.

Waves, only we hear the waves.

CREDITS ROLL

While credits roll we fade in from black to--

EXT. BEACH - DAY

Two chairs sit in front of each other at the edge of the water.