Arsmedia

Genre: Feature fiction film
Duration: cca 100 min
Based on a novel by: Goran Vojnović
Screenplay: Goran Vojnović, Aleksandar Popovski
Script doctor: Stefan Arsenijević
Director: Goran Vojnović
Producer: Boštjan Ikovic

LOGLINE

People remember. And that is their greatest curse.

SYNOPSIS

Thirty-three-year-old Vladan Borojević, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts, lives a normal life with his girlfriend Nadja, until one evening he sees a soldier in a photograph who looks like his late father. He types his father’s name into an internet search engine and suddenly everything changes for Vladan. For almost twenty years Vladan was convinced that his father, a newspaperman for the Yugoslav People’s Army, had died in the war, but it turns out that he is alive. What’s more, General Nedeljko Borojević is accused of war crimes and has been hiding from the international court in The Hague for years. Vladan lived in Pula as a child, but at the outbreak of the war, the family was transferred to Belgrade, where his father went off to war and Vladan and his mother fled to Slovenia. Shortly afterward, his mother told him that his father had died in the war, but she was lying. Determined to contact his father and find out the truth about him, Vladan is forced to contact his estranged mother, Duša, who has started a new family in Ljubljana. Vladan manages to find out from Duša Nedeljko’s address in Brcko, from where Nedeljko last wrote to her, and although Duša is convinced that Nedeljko has long since disappeared from that address, Vladan decides to travel to Brcko. At the same time, Vladan learns that Nadja is pregnant, but with everything that is happening to him, he can’t quite seem to grasp it. Nadja wants Vladan to stay by her side, but he decides to go to Bosnia anyway. During a tour of the apartment, Vladan finds Nedeljko’s unsent letter to Duša. But shortly after leaving his father’s former apartment, Vladan finds himself tied up and locked in the boot of a car. When the trunk is finally opened, Vladan finds himself in a deserted place by the river, with three men by his side, who see him as an unwanted snoop and want to liquidate him. Even decades after the end of the Yugoslav war, some people are willing to kill to hide the truth about it, but Vladan is determined to find his father, whatever the consequences.

DIRECTOR’S STATMENT

“War crimes committed by our fathers do not become obsolete, they do not disintegrate along with the countries and they do not fade away with the ideas in the name of which they were committed. War crimes are not forgotten along with the names of war criminals and their victims, when societies discover the magic of forgetting, war crimes do not die along with the victims, their relatives and descendants. War crimes fill the air, flow into rivers and soak into the soil, until they finally enter our blood.”

CO-PRODUCERS

DFPM Kino OKO – N. Macedonia
SET SAIL FILMS – Serbia
TUNA FILM-E – Croatia
EUTOPIAFILM – Austria
MB Grip – Slovenia
NuFrame – Slovenia
Zvokarna – Slovenia

CO-FUNDING

Slovenian film centre

CO-FUNDING, DEVELOPMENT