21/04/2015 - Dalibor Matanić's ninth film is only the second feature ever by a Croatian director to take part in Cannes' Un Certain Regard

The High Sun [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dalibor Matanic
interview: Tihana Lazovic
film profile] by Croatian writer-director Dalibor Matanić (Handymen, Daddy, Mother of Asphalt [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) has been selected for the 2015 Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section. 

This is the third Cannes outing for Matanić, who was on the Croisette previously with his shorts Drought (in the Directors’ Fortnight in 2003) and Party (in the Critics’ Week in 2009), and it is only the second time in Un Certain Regard for a feature film by a Croatian director – after Rajko Grlić's The Melody Haunts My Memory in 1981, when the country was still part of Yugoslavia.

The High Sun consists of three love stories set in Croatia over three decades, and the protagonists in all of them are played by the internationally little-known Goran Marković, and Tihana Lazović, who starred in Lukas Nola's Hush… [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tihana Lazovic
film profile] and won the Best Debutant Award at the Pula Film Festival in 2013.

What connects the stories is the fact that the love between a Croatian man and a Serbian woman is in a way forbidden, whether it takes place in 1991, 2001 or 2011.

The first story is set in 1991, right before the war begins, and there is a high degree of tension, which is bad grounds for any romance, let alone one between two young people from neighbouring villages, but of different nationalities. Ten years later, the war is over, but not forgotten – the protagonists have to face the scars that are still far from healed. In the third story, set in 2011, there are no more threats nor tensions, but the doubts have not been erased. However, maybe it is time for a new beginning.

“As a film director, for a long time I have been interested in the hatred between Balkan nations,” says Matanić. “It came out of the war, religion and politics. My intention is to confront the accumulated bigotry between the nations in the region with the clearest and cleanest of all instincts: love.” 

Producer Ankica Jurić Tilić agrees: “This is a film about love, as pure and simple as that.” 

The High Sun was co-produced by Croatia's Kinorama, Slovenia's Gustav Film and Serbia's SEE Film Pro, and was supported by MEDIA and Eurimages. International sales are handled by the Dubai-based company Cercamon.