08/11/2023 - Andrej Korovljev’s film follows a Bosnian refugee and a young Croatian woman who try to love each other despite the difficult conflictual context of the region in 1995

The wars that set the Balkans ablaze in the 1990s remain a cruel and bottomless reserve of stories, reflections, memories and mirrors from which many films have already come out, which does not preclude more variations to regularly appear. Such is the case of  Hotel Pula by Andrej Korovljev, screened at the 24th Arras Film Festival as part of a Focus dedicated to Croatia. The film is set in 1995 at a time when traumatised Bosnian refugees wait in the seaside Croatian town of Pula (some of them are still there), in a hotel converted into a welcome centre. Can someone recover the taste for life and love after suffering terrible hardship? What secrets are buried into silence? 

After opening on the horrific testimony from a one-handed refugee, the film follows the journey of Mahir (Ermin Bravo), a very quiet Bosnian man of 38 who has been living for three years in suspended time, in the obscure rooms and corridors of the Hotel Pula (“I don’t do anything, I walk and when I’m tired, I take the bus; I listen to people crying here”). Two steps away from this living grave, young locals enjoy punk music, dance frenetically as suits their age, and enjoy the beach day and night. Among them is Una (Nika Grbelja), a young 18-year-old woman who dreams of Italy, where her father has escaped from the marital home, leaving behind his two children and a wife who drowns her sorrow in alcohol. Mahir and Una’s gazes meet and, at the very direct initiative of the latter, the two protagonists progressively grow closer, their idyl breaking the first layer of thick psychological barriers erected by Mahir. But who is he, really? What exactly did he live through that made him flee Bosnia? The past will eventually catch up with him and trigger another chain of events… 

Written by Ivan Turkovic Krnjak based on a novel by Vladimir Stojsavljevic, Hotel Pula aims for an apparent simplicity (with archetypal secondary characters such as the confidante best friend, the harsh and despairing mother, the locals who are more of less welcoming of foreigners) in order to suggest opaque depths. This is a film of many contrasts, on several levels (the two central characters, the light and the immense horizon of the sea in opposition to the darkness and the almost prison-like atmosphere of the hotel, days and nights, etc.). Through a touching and credible love story (both lovers have their reasons), the film in fact ingeniously shares its message without needing to verbalise everything: the war is very bad karma that can never be fully erased because what it changes in the inner depths of a person is irreversible, but youth can always make a new start.

Hotel Pula was produced by Croatian company Kinematograf.

(Translated from French)