Žuža Egreny

It’s inspiring true story about two thirteen-year-old girls who were, on the eve of World War II, great dancing and acting stars in Zagreb. Selling out theatre venues, they were praised in the most superb headlines by the Croatian and European press. They were filmed by Parisian Pathe and Berlin’s UFA… During the Nazi persecution of Jews and the later German nationals’ flight from communists, a dramatic friendship was born through entertainment, dance, but also anxiety. This led towards an unexpected end.

It is nighttime. In Croatia, a young woman cannot sleep because her baby keeps crying. Her mother-in-law is also being kept awake by the baby's crying and she is not shy about offering unwanted child-rearing advice to her daughter-in-law. In Spain, a young husband and wife are also wide awake in the dead of night: they are in the middle of a turbulent argument. She is Spanish, he is Croatian and their marriage is in crisis because they simply do not understand one another. Back in Croatia, the young man's elderly mother is also awake, plagued with indigestion pains. The old woman is also worried about her lodger, a young Spanish girl who happens to be the sister of the old woman's daughter-in-law in Spain. The young girl comes home with her new lover. He is a taxi driver who drifts aimlessly through the night while his own wife endures a sleepless night with a crying baby and a nagging mother-in-law.

Next to a small Dalmatian town of Murvice oil was found, and politicians make a hasty decision to build a tanker port, although there is no oil in the quantities required for exploitation. Urged by his ambitious wife, the engineer Slobodan Despot becomes director of the port construction, which his wife's lover skillfully exploits to use Despot as scapegoat. The construction of unprofitable airport gradually destroys the patriarchal structure of Murvice, as well as Despot's personal life and ideals, which he tried to restore by having affair with the young and unspoiled girl.

Zlatko Kovač, a provincial professor, gets the job in the big city's school, only to find out that his red-employment is not random. Professor Toth, the man he replaced, has died under the strange circumstances. Kovac meets a variety of strange people in his school's collective, and it was not long before they came up with the new body. However, the police is unable to solve the case, but he takes the matter into his own hands and setting a trap for a murderer on a school manifestation.

A beautiful and poetic at the same time difficult and tragic story. In the distant mountain village in Herzegovina, shortly after the end of World War II, lonely women and children await the return of men from the front. The few men that remained in the village trying to go to America and find the salvation of the lumber and stone. Center of the story is loneliness and anticipation. This is a tragic story of two men whose fight for the heart of a woman cost the head of both.