The setting is the islands off the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, during WW II. The islands are controlled by occupying Italian forces, and a resistence movement of Communists is dedicated to sabotaging and ending the occupation. When a wealthy young man joins the resistence, he falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a spy for the Italians. As a result of his liaison and her activity, they are both executed by a Communist comrade – a previous friend. The comrade is dedicated to the hard-line policies of the resistence, until he himself falls in love with the daughter of a bourgeois landowner on the island – a landowner who has collaborated with the Italians. Neither the Italian occupying army (one officer is shown in an attempted rape scene) nor the resistence fighters are stereotyped forces for good or evil, but all are equally subject to the dehumanizing effects of war.
Tag: yugoslavia
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Variola Vera
An Albanian pilgrim, infected with an unknown disease, is on his way back to Belgrade from the Middle East. When doctors realize that it is a disease that has been considered eradicated, it is already too late – variola vera begins to languish and the hospital is quarantined.
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Taiwan Canasta
A frustrated and unemployed architect experiences flashbacks of his youth and 1968 protests while the life passes by. Unable to adapt and to accept the reality, he’s constantly getting into conflicts with the people around him.
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Evening Bells
Trials and tribulations of a Croatian communist intellectual in the turbulent years before, during and after the Second World War.
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Happy New ’49
The story of two brothers of different orientation and fate. The drama takes place in an atmosphere of tension and fear, during the conflict of Yugoslav Communist Party with the Stalinism, during the Cominform. Older brother Dragoslav, a returnee from Russia, was unjustly accused of being a Russian spy and subsequently arrested. Younger brother Kosta is not interested in politics, but he’s attracted by a brother’s wife Vera and underworld mafia. In the end, it turns out that a young woman belongs to the Soviet spy agency.
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Vukovar Poste Restante
The violent break-up of former Yugoslavia is described from the Serbian point of view, using the story of ethnically mixed couple in war-torn city of Vukovar as metaphor.
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Someone Else’s America
This tale takes place in a bar. The Spanish Alonso and his blind mother run this place. Bay, who is Alonso’s friend live here too. This story tells something about Alonso and Bay and the “American Dream”.
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Pretty Village, Pretty Flame
In the opening stages of the Bosnian War, a small group of Serbian soldiers are trapped in a tunnel by a Muslim force.
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NATO Targets Yugoslavia
An anti-war documentary featuring original on-the-ground footage and interviews from the 1999 NATO war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Watch the 78 days of untold destruction, bombing bridges, hospitals, schools, and dropping up to 11 tons of depleted uranium across the country that NATO considers a successful “humanitarian intervention” in Yugoslavia. Filmmaker Gloria La Riva lifts the veil of imperialist propaganda to reveal the humanitarian crisis caused by the war.
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The Red Colored Grey Truck
Belgrade, the summer of 1991. Yugoslavia is falling apart. Gavran can’t get a driving licence because he is color blind. He is a rural Bosnian introvert obsessed with trucks. So, as soon as he is released from prison, he steals a truck to go on a joyride. Suzana, a city girl, discovers she is pregnant, but until she’s due for an abortion, she decides to go to Dubrovnik. She hitchikes and Gavran almost runs her over. She is unhurt, but she blackmails him to take her to Dubrovnik. Two people from different worlds, equally removed from the real one. For him she is the first woman he can talk to; for her he is just another idiot to add to the long list of them that she has so far compiled. But the pressure of danger and the intimations of war force them together. The world about them has become so absurd that they seem to each other the only sober people left.