Petnaesta Umjetnost

While state authorities chase down supplies of increasingly rare Covid vaccinations, the queues of those waiting for them stretch endlessly along streets. Those queuing comprise a microcosm of the populace – a tapestry of personalities that range from stern gatekeepers to elderly women deliberating over vaccine preferences. As it moves from the bustling queues to the hushed interiors of vaccination centres, Pavilion 6 shifts from patients to the nurses and other members of staff.

Erna and Dževad are the owners of a pub in the vicinity of a steel mill, a complex that used to be one of the largest of its kind in Eastern Europe. Taking place one week before the pub’s official closedown, the film follows a series of conversations between visitors and frequent guests, who discuss the ways of reaching Germany – a new utopia of former socialist workers.

Too afraid to confess to his wife that he fell for another woman, a middle-aged man turns into a ticking bomb that might explode right into his face.

Zeljko is the labour union leader at Gredelj Train Factory. His deputy, Mladen, has committed suicide after massive public protests and inter-union clashes. Zeljko is torn between the guilt he feels over Mladen’s death and workers’ expectations that he will lead a strike that should thwart a plan by the government, acting on the EU’s behest, to declare the factory bankrupt. WHAT’S TO BE DONE? is structured in three acts. The first act uses observational documentary footage; the second, footage filmed a decade later; while the third is fiction.

The film follows the tenants of a building in Sisak’s industrial suburb of Željezara during a period in which a large mural of a Croatian street artist appears on one side of the building. All the political changes the area has experienced have shaped the tenants of the building itself.

Following the river flowing through the centre of Sisak, the film creates a portrait of a former industrial city. The river today is a space for leisure and relaxation. However, when we examine the people that live and spend time there, the social conflicts of the transition break out onto the surface. The river reveals the remains of past that were left in the water.

A "road movie" to the past: two buses, two journeys, two final destinations, two opposing ideologies. The first bus carrying "the victors" on their way to commemorate and celebrate Tito's birthday at his birthplace, the second transporting the elderly and "defeated", as well as some young idealists, to the place of the World War II massacre at Bleiburg. But to the filmmaker Goran Devic, an outsider and observer, it was much more than that: "I was struck by the dramatic and emotional "sameness" of what was going on around me."

Two Furnaces for Udarnik Josip Trojko follows the disassembling of the famous Siemens-Martin furnace, which once stood at the heart of the huge Yugoslavian iron industry. As we watch the old making way for the new, we hear off-camera archive recordings of political speeches, full of enthusiasm and ideological optimism, from the period when the old furnace was in operation.

The film is followed by Croatian anti-EU activist Marko Franišković who tried to run for the election in his radical political program. What is happening to him on this path is questioned by the proclaimed principle of parliamentary democracy. Documentary-judicial horror.

The unseen damage inflicted by war on personal relationships casts its shadow over the homecoming of Serhiy, a veteran haunted by loss. He finds himself increasingly isolated as he battles to reconnect with his wife, Nadiia, and their three sons, Sasha, Artem and Nikita. The film takes an unexpected turn when Serhiy turns the camera on its director. This role reversal creates a space for vulnerable dialogue about love and human relationships as the filmmaker shares her own experience of break-up with another war veteran.

The film follows a rather peculiar workshop held in Zagreb for foreigners with deep pockets. The aim of the workshop is to teach participants a very basic skill – how to seduce a woman in order to get her to bed.

Passive regions of Lika, Kosinja and neighboring villages every twenty years affect the flood caused by abundant rains and snow melting. The director is questioning whether a natural disaster can connect what the close war past separated?