INTERVIEW WITH DR. ZELJKO MIRKOVIC

Director of Innovation in Connecticut | Associate Research Professor, University of Connecticut

Please tell us a little about yourself, and your academic background. How did you become interested in filmmaking? Tell us about your previous projects, before making Innovation in Connecticut.

I am a documentary filmmaker, producer, and Associate Research Professor at the University of Connecticut. My professional life has always existed at the intersection of filmmaking, research, education, and public storytelling.

I hold a PhD in documentary film and media, but my relationship with filmmaking began much earlier. I was fascinated by the ability of documentary cinema to preserve a moment in history while simultaneously creating an emotional experience. A documentary can begin with one person, one place, or one question and ultimately reveal something universal about society.

Over the years, I have directed and produced documentaries that have traveled internationally through festivals, television broadcasts, educational screenings, and streaming platforms. My films have been broadcast and presented in the United States and across Europe, including through PBS and broadcasters in Serbia, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and other territories.

Two of my documentaries, The Second Meeting and Tesla Nation, qualified for Academy Award consideration. Across my body of work, my films and related projects have received 142international awards and recognitions.

Before Innovation in Connecticut, much of my work explored identity, history, migration, science, culture, and the relationship between individuals and larger historical forces. Those experiences became very important when I arrived at UConn because I began asking a new question: Can the same cinematic language used to tell powerful human stories also make research, science, entrepreneurship, and innovation emotionally accessible to a broad public?

Innovation in Connecticut grew from that question.

You are an Associate Research Professor at UConn as well as a filmmaker. How does your academic career influence the way you approach documentary filmmaking?

My academic work and filmmaking are not separate careers. Increasingly, I see them as parts of the same mission.

Working inside a major research university gives me extraordinary access to ideas that are shaping the future. I meet scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, students, policymakers, and researchers who are working on subjects ranging from artificial intelligence and quantum technologies to sustainability, energy, medicine, and advanced manufacturing.

But important research does not automatically become an important public story.

That is where documentary filmmaking becomes essential.

My academic background encourages me to research a subject deeply, understand its complexity, and respect intellectual accuracy. My filmmaking experience asks a different set of questions: Where is the human story? Where is the emotion? What is the visual metaphor? How do we transform information into an experience that someone wants to watch?

I am particularly interested in developing a model of documentary storytelling within the research university—one in which filmmaking is not simply a promotional tool, but a form of research communication, public engagement, education, and cultural record.

That approach also shapes my teaching at UConn.

In my Smartphone Filmmaking course, students learn that technology is only a tool. Storytelling remains the essential skill. I encourage them to think as filmmakers: to observe, research, structure, interview, edit, and find an authentic visual language.

The results have been extremely encouraging. Student films from my course have received multiple awards, and several have attracted interest for television presentation through Connecticut Public Television. For me, that is particularly meaningful. My goal is not simply to teach students how to make an assignment. It is to help them create work capable of existing beyond the classroom.

What do you think about the role documentaries play in bridging the gap between universities, science, innovation, and the public? What made you want to become a documentary filmmaker?

Universities produce extraordinary knowledge, but there is often a significant distance between that knowledge and the general public.

Documentary film can help close that distance.

A scientific paper speaks primarily to a specialized community. A documentary can take the underlying idea and introduce it to hundreds of thousands—or potentially millions—of people without sacrificing its intellectual importance.

That is particularly important today. Artificial intelligence, quantum science, climate change, clean energy, biotechnology, and other areas of research are transforming society at extraordinary speed. The public needs ways to understand not only what these technologies are, but why they matter.

Documentary storytelling can provide that bridge because it combines information with human experience.

That is one of the reasons I became a documentary filmmaker. I have always believed that documentary cinema can create understanding between people who might otherwise never meet. Today, I am applying the same philosophy to the relationship between universities and society.

A research university should not only produce knowledge. It should also find compelling ways to share that knowledge with the world.

Where did the idea for the film come from? Please tell us about the core idea behind the film, especially the “innovation ecosystem” at UConn, and how you came to develop it.

The idea developed from observing UConn and Connecticut from inside the university, initiated by President Dr. Radeanka Maric.

I realized very quickly that innovation was not happening in one laboratory, one department, or one building. It was happening through relationships.

Researchers were developing ideas. Students were creating companies. Entrepreneurs were connecting with university resources. Investors were looking for emerging technologies. State government was building policies and infrastructure to support economic development. Industry was searching for talent and research partnerships.

I became interested in the invisible network connecting all of these people.

That became the central concept of the film: the innovation ecosystem.

Instead of making a documentary about a single invention, I wanted to make a film about the environment that allows inventions and ideas to move from imagination toward real-world impact.

UConn became the central point through which we could explore that larger Connecticut ecosystem.

The challenge was cinematic: How do you visualize an ecosystem that is largely invisible?

My solution was to construct the film as a conversation among people who occupy different parts of that system—university leadership, researchers, entrepreneurs, students, investors, industry leaders, and policymakers.

The viewer gradually understands that innovation is not a solitary act. It is a network.

That became both the intellectual argument and the visual structure of the film.

Did the university have any form of involvement in your project and its production stages, or did you have complete artistic freedom? Tell us about the production itself.

UConn was an essential environment for the project because the university gave me access to remarkable people, research, facilities, and ideas. At the same time, maintaining a genuine documentary perspective was extremely important to me.

My objective was never to make a conventional institutional promotional film.

I wanted to create a documentary that could stand independently as a film—something with its own visual language, structure, rhythm, characters, questions, and cinematic identity.

That distinction is fundamental.

The production required extensive research because the subject is enormously broad. We had to identify people who could represent different parts of the innovation ecosystem while ensuring that their voices complemented rather than repeated one another.

The interviews were therefore only one layer.

We also needed laboratories, classrooms, companies, technologies, environments, architecture, movement, and visual details that could transform abstract concepts into cinematic sequences.

Editing was especially important. With a film containing many voices and complex ideas, the greatest danger is creating a sequence of interviews rather than a documentary.

The final structure was built almost like a conversation in which one person’s thought leads naturally to another person’s experience.

That rhythm became central to the film.

In the film, you use this unique idea that each interviewee talks to an exact copy of themselves. Please tell us about the intent behind this, and how it helps the overall theme(s) of the documentary.

This visual device came directly from the central idea of innovation.

Innovation begins with questioning what already exists.

If I made a film about innovation using only the most conventional visual grammar of institutional documentaries, there would be a contradiction between the subject and the form.

So I wanted the visual language itself to occasionally behave innovatively.

The duplicated interviewee creates the impression that a person is simultaneously explaining, questioning, observing, and responding to themselves. In some moments it feels like an internal dialogue; in others, it suggests multiple versions of the same idea existing at once. We created Quantum scenes.

There is also a deeper connection to the film’s theme.

Innovation rarely follows a straight line. It involves reflection, contradiction, experimentation, failure, revision, and new perspectives. The visual duplication became a metaphor for that process.

It also helps disrupt the traditional “talking head” convention. Instead of treating interviews simply as information, I wanted them to become part of the visual storytelling.

For me, documentary form should never be invisible by default. Sometimes the way we present an idea can help the audience understand the idea itself.

Tell us some of the challenges you faced when making Innovation in Connecticut.

The greatest challenge was making an abstract subject cinematic.

Innovation does not have one face.

An invention can be photographed. A laboratory can be filmed. A scientist can be interviewed. But an ecosystem—relationships among universities, government, industry, investment, entrepreneurship, research, and students—is much more difficult to visualize.

The second challenge was complexity.

Many of the people in the film work with sophisticated scientific, technological, economic, or institutional concepts. Our responsibility was to preserve their intelligence without allowing the film to become inaccessible.

The third challenge was scale.

Connecticut has an extraordinary concentration of universities, research institutions, industries, startups, government initiatives, and talented individuals. A documentary cannot include everything. Documentary filmmaking is therefore as much about what you leave out as what you include.

The final challenge was maintaining cinematic energy.

When a documentary relies heavily on interviews, rhythm becomes critical. Editing, cinematography, music, sound design, archival material, graphics, and visual experimentation all had to work together.

Ultimately, those challenges helped define the film’s style.

If you could leave viewers with one idea about innovation, Connecticut, and the future, what would you want them to take away from Innovation in Connecticut?

Innovation is ultimately about people connecting with other people.

Technology matters. Research matters. Funding matters. Institutions matter.

But none of those elements creates an ecosystem independently.

Innovation happens when a scientist meets an entrepreneur, when a student finds a mentor, when a university connects with industry, when government creates the conditions for experimentation, and when an idea is given the opportunity to become something larger.

Connecticut has an unusual advantage because many of those elements exist within a relatively compact geographic area.

My hope is that viewers finish the film thinking not only, “There are interesting things happening in Connecticut,” but:

“Something important is being built here, and I want to know what happens next.”

That sense of possibility is ultimately what the film is about.

Tell us about the feedback. How was your festival experience, in terms of screenings and awards?

The response has been extremely encouraging.

Innovation in Connecticut has received international festival recognition and 14 awards, but what interests me most is the diversity of the response. The film is being recognized not simply as an institutional or educational project, but as documentary cinema.

That distinction matters enormously to me.

The recent critical response has been especially meaningful because reviewers have discussed the film’s visual language, editing, tone, structure, and ability to transform a potentially abstract subject into an engaging cinematic experience.

Awards and festivals are valuable because they provide independent validation, but they also create a bridge between a university-based project and the international filmmaking community.

My broader body of work has received more than 140 international awards and recognitions, and two of my documentaries have qualified for Academy Award consideration. I therefore approach festivals not simply as competitions, but as places where films find audiences, professional communities, broadcasters, distributors, and future collaborators.

I am equally proud when my students begin experiencing that process themselves.

Seeing student work from UConn receive awards and attract interest beyond the university demonstrates something I believe very strongly: academic filmmaking does not need to remain inside the classroom.

It can enter the world.

Tell us about your next projects, and what lies ahead, especially with related projects such as Quantum and AI in Connecticut.

Innovation in Connecticut was never intended to be the end of the story. In many ways, I see it as the beginning of a larger documentary exploration of how universities, science, technology, and society are shaping the future.

One of the major projects now is Quantum and AI in Connecticut.

Quantum technology and artificial intelligence are often discussed as abstract concepts or as technologies belonging to some distant future. But that future is already being constructed.

The documentary examines the emerging quantum and AI ecosystem in Connecticut through UConn, Yale, QuantumCT, state leadership, researchers, industry, entrepreneurs, and other partners. The larger question is not simply “What is quantum?” or “What is AI?” but: What happens when an entire region begins preparing for the next technological era?

Another major project is Journey to the Fifth Energy Revolution – Carbon Neutral World.

That film looks at one of the defining challenges of our century: the transition toward a carbon-neutral future. It brings together research, technology, climate science, government, industry, energy systems, and the people trying to transform how we produce and consume energy.

These films are connected.

Innovation in Connecticut establishes the ecosystem.

Quantum and AI in Connecticut examines technologies that may define the next economic and scientific revolution.

Journey to the Fifth Energy Revolution – Carbon Neutral World explores one of the greatest global challenges that innovation must help solve.

I am increasingly interested in developing this into a broader documentary model for research universities.

Universities contain thousands of extraordinary stories. The opportunity is to move beyond traditional institutional communication and tell those stories through ambitious cinematic documentary storytelling capable of reaching festivals, television audiences, digital platforms, classrooms, policymakers, industry, and the general public.

That is the direction I want to continue exploring at UConn and within the broader American academic and documentary landscape.

If there is anything we haven’t covered in our questions, we would be very happy to hear it.

There is one aspect of this work that is particularly important to me: the connection between research, filmmaking, teaching, and public impact.

I do not see the filmmaker’s role at a university simply as documenting what has already happened.

I believe filmmakers can become part of the intellectual ecosystem of a university.

We can work with researchers while ideas are developing. We can identify stories that might otherwise remain invisible. We can translate complex research into human narratives. We can create long-term visual records of scientific and institutional transformation. And, perhaps most importantly, we can bring students into that process.

At UConn, I have been trying to connect these elements through documentary production, Smartphone Filmmaking, student projects, science and innovation storytelling, and the development of new media initiatives.

When students see their work receive awards, reach audiences beyond campus, or attract interest from professional broadcasters, something changes. They begin to understand that a university classroom can be the starting point of professional creative work.

For me, this represents a larger opportunity for higher education.

The university of the future will not only generate knowledge. It will need to become increasingly sophisticated at telling the story of knowledge.

Film has an extraordinary role to play in that transformation.

After many years of making documentaries internationally, I find this intersection of cinema, education, science, and innovation one of the most exciting chapters of my career.

And I believe we are only at the beginning.