ZVIZDAN at the Sarajevo Film Festival

Could genuine relationships between people 
last
and intensify
and actually push them ahead
in their destinies?

This is the question that crosses
from beginning to end
ZVIZDAN
(international title THE HIGH SUN),
the croatian film
selected in Un Certain regard in Cannes
and presented these days at the groovy 21st Sarajevo Film Festival.

Dalibor Matanić's work is divided in 3 acts,

corresponding to 3 decennies

in the history of a village

in the Balkans (1991, 2001, 2011).

On stage, with minimal variations,

is the forbidden relationship

between a Serbian and a Croatian.

The names of the characters change,

but they are relentlessly played
by the same actors
( Goran Markovic and Tihana Lazarovic).

And this is only to underline
the cyclical nature
of human affairs
and their universality...

War stays out of frame.

In 1991 it had not bursted yet.

In 2001 it was already over.

Conflict was in the air though already

and its dark wings were beating henceforth...

But Matanic is not interested

in doing memorial work...

... or in excavating

among the ethnical divisions

of yesterday or today.

What he cares about
is to make us FEEL IT in the air..

...he cares about isolating the pulsions
of such a background 
and transforming the frame
in a champ de forces...

A cinema, his cinema,
moved by a violent sensual energy, by an erotic tension
that nor history
or cultural differencies
could contain...

It is a metahistorical vision

supported flawlessly

by the screenplay...

An indefined village at the border,

suspended in time

and submersed in a balmy light...

summerish...

pregnant with epiphanies...

The chemistry between the two actors

is ideal.

The way they use their bodies,

the looks they launch at each other...

....they repel
and they sniff each other,

with that spark

of the authentic

and the extraordinary...

The contrast with the flat

and calm nature around

is overwhelming...

.... a reservoir of unrest

in the peaceful neutrality of nature...

...Because for Matanic,

the world existed before any me,
or us,
or them...

...a finding that is

more than reassuring...



by Giulia Ghica Dobre

in Sarajevo

at the 21st SFF in Sarajevo,
"THE HIGH SUN" was awarded:
CICAE AWARD