WI Film Festival: Guardians of the Formula

1958. Fear grips the world as the Cold War rages on and the specter of nuclear annihilation looms large. In Yugoslavia, a daring group of young scientists working on a clandestine project face a deadly fate after a lethal dose of uranium irradiates them. With time ticking away and death’s shadow looming closer, they’re stealthily whisked away to Paris’s Institut Curie. In France, they are introduced to Dr. Georges Mathé, a brilliant but inscrutable scientist, who proposes a daring solution: the world’s first bone marrow transplant. As the lines blur between salvation and sacrifice, the ultimate question remains: is this Mathé’s bid for a heroic scientific triumph or a reckless gamble with human lives? Guardians of the Formula is a suspenseful, philosophical, and thought-provoking historical thriller. Serbian director and co-screenwriter Dragan Bjelogrlic convincingly recreates a moment in history that marks not only a culmination of geopolitical tensions, but the dawn of a medical breakthrough. “A film that proves, in elegant defiance of Chekov’s Gun, that sometimes the most dramatic story is of the bomb that doesn’t go off” (Jessica Kiang, Variety). Guardians won the Variety Piazza Grande Award at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival and Audience Awards at the 2023 Sarajevo Film Festival and the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival. (JH)