The Frog / Žaba

previously published on Cineuropa

Based on a record-breaking theatre play that has been on stage for almost a decade now, The Frog has some serious shoes to fill in domestically and on the regional level. Directed by Elmir Jukić who has done most of his work on television and written by him and Pjer Žalica (Fuse) based on Dubravko Mihanović’s theatre piece, The Frog strives to be as faithful to the riginal play as possible so it keeps all of its actors. After the world premiere at Sarajevo Film Festival, it hits the Croatian audience at Zagreb Film Festival (out of competition) where the script was developed years earlier through My First Screenplay workshop.

Zeko (Emir Hadžihafizbegović in the second great role this year after Men Don’t Cry) is a barber and a war veteran suffering from PTSD whose family has left him because of his violent outbursts. He wants to start the new chapter of his life and he thinks that the way to do it is to try to help the only two people he cares about, his brother Braco (Aleksandar Seksan known for Our Everyday Life) and their friend Švabo (Bosnian for Kraut) played by Mirsad Tuka. They both have serious problems, Braco is a gambler and a drunk angry about the current state of things in the country while reminiscencing of the “golden”, pre-war times, while cab-driving Švabo, who spent the war time abroad (hence the nickname) and does not get all the post-war mojo very well, cheats his wife with a much younger lover. What would be a better day to fix their lives and make them start over again than the Muslim holiday of Eid, so they meet in Zeko’s barber shop for a cup of coffee, some cookies and talk, but the things get out of control quite quickly, fights ensue and the threat of violence is constantly in the air.

The title animal occurs in conversations twice during the film, never in its literal form. At the very beginning, it is an old car, Citroen DS, nicknamed the frog in parts of Yugoslavia, once owned by Zeko’s and Braco’s father, driven by two of them for their youthful adventures. The other frog is the character of Haruki Murakami’s story Super-Frog saves Tokyo from the after the quake [the title is being written that way] collection. For some reason, Zeko finds the part of the story published in newspaper his new guiding light and life’s philosophy urging people around him to change, while being unable to change himself. The arrival of the book salesman (Moamer Kasumović) in the crucial moment for Zeko will explain the mystery of the latter frog and offer a key for the interpretation of the film and the frog as the constant search for the meaning in life, working both in local and universal context.

Theatrical background of the source material is notable from the setting of one single space for the most of the time, sometimes long takes from hand-held camera and few significant characters. Jukić also breaks the frame, at times taking the film outside the shop, introducing flashbacks from Zeko’s memories and writing new cameo-esque characters into the script, some of them were played by legendary actors like Boro Stjepanović and Vlasta Velisavljević. However, the acting style of the ensemble reprising their roles from the play is different, cinematic and more realistic, making The Frog far more than merely a piece of filmed theatre.

A Film a Week - 3 Women (or Waking Up from My Bosnian Dream)

It might sound exotic, a Bosnian film written and directed by a Mexican filmmaker and produced by “big guns” like Bela Tarr and Michel Franco, but the final product is not that cool, insightful or polished as it seems. It is a Film.factory’s second feature film, after a bunch of shorts (some of them done by 3 Women director Sergio Flores Thorija), and Film.factory as a project between Tarr and Sarajevo Film Academy is coming to an end after several years of training filmmaking students and producing festival “filler” films. 3 Women (or Waking Up from My Bosnian Dream) walks along the same lines, unfortunately.

The film was actually developed from Thorija’s own short Bosnian Dream that is incorporated here as one of the mildly and superficially hyper-linked stories about women of Sarajevo or women in Sarajevo. That story follows Ivana (played by young Ivana Vojinović), her exhausting daily routine of working hard and taking care of her ill mother and her dream of leaving Bosnia, emigrating for a better life.

The second story is situated around Clara (a newcomer Clara Casagrande), a Spanish ex-pat trying to make it as an exotic dancer only to be faced with the prejudice of local community about her way of life. The third one is also about prejudice and shame. Marina has to say goodbye to her best friend Selma (both played by first-timers Marina Komšić and Selma Memović respectively), who is leaving for Sweden and has to deal with her romantic feelings towards her in a homophobic surrounding and gender stereotypes personified by her own family.

The only story that works well and feels genuine in the setting of Sarajveo, Bosnia and Balkans is the first one. The idea of emigrating as a necessity for a normal life is the real issue, especially placed in contrast with very little specific skills that could make that dream come true. The other two stories told that way are more part of the problem and reinforcing the stereotypes of Balkans as the land of sexually repressed, homophobic people with ultra-conservative values then they are the part of solution. The main issue is that they don’t feel grounded in reality of Sarajevo, since the same things can happen pretty much anywhere in the world.

Style-wise, 3 Women looks a bit bland, shot in natural colours on the verge of drab, underlined by hand-held camera, kinda unfiltered sound and amateurish acting, especially problematic in the terms of line delivery. So, Altman’s “bergmanesque” dreamy extravaganza of the same title is just a distant echo here. All of that was probably a product of both low budget and Thorija’s artistic decisions, but in the end, it keeps the film just a notch above student work. It premiered in the competition of New Horizons before hitting the home turf in Sarajevo and will probably continue to fill in the program of various low-to-mid-level film festivals.

A Film a Week - Dead Fish / Mrtve ribe

originally published on Cineuropa:

The trickiest thing with wars is not the shooting and the immediate death lurking around every corner. No, every war leaves its consequences on people who are left in the limbo of PTSD and frustration while trying to get back to a life they could call “normal”. Some make it, some do not. Some take alcohol as a comfort, some do not. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it does not. Some find will to live, some just give up at one point and commit suicide. The latest Kristijan Milić’s film Dead Fish, world-premiering on Pula Film Festival is one of the studies of scars the war in Yugoslavia left on people and long-term consequences for the cities and countries.

The story, based on a short-story collection by Josip Mlakić who adapted it to a screenplay himself, is constructed in Altman’s Short Cuts fashion and follows a group of war veterans and younger people on the both sides of the city dealing both with the visible consequences of war and havoc and the long-term ones hidden under the surface, simultaneously catching the spirit of the place and dealing with the universal issues. Some of those stories and their characters are better developed, for instance in the first half of the film a suicidal man nicknamed Professor played by Dragan Despot is basically the protagonist whose death becomes the link between all the pieces of mosaic, while some other stories are just little vignettes with somewhat under-developed characters.

On the other hand, Kristijan Milić is doing his best to keep the whole film compact in audience-friendly format, a notch over two hours, which can prove to be hard for that kind of “hyperlink” stories. After two genre flicks, The Living and the Dead (2007) and Number 55 (2014), it is his first attempt to do something in a more deliberate pace, which he does with a good sense of rhythm, adding occasional bursts of action into a toned-down film. Visual references to Jarmusch and Hitchcock are evident, but work as subtle homages, and Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men and Bergman’s The Seventh Seal are quoted in the film’s text often to an awkwardly humorous effect, which makes Dead Fish easily watchable, yet profound film experience and a meditative addition to the filmmaker’s war-themed opus.

The film was shot in Mostar, a divided city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the name is rarely spoken. The locations are unique and recognizable for domestic crowd and foreign tourists as well, but the story of a divided town can be applied to many places like that all over Bosnia and former Yugoslavia. Soft black and white cinematography by Mirko Pivčević dictates the dark and gloomy mood and is underlined by Andrija Milić’s somewhat jazzy score.

Dead Fish was produced by Eurofilm from Zagreb and Oktavijan from Mostar with additional funds of Croatian Audio-Visual Centre (HAVC) and Cultural Fund of Sarajevo Catnon.