03/07/2024 - Having endured only hardships in his life, a good man crosses a moral boundary to become a member of a fascist militia in Bruno Anković’s mesmerising debut feature

The short novel Celebration (2019) by Damir Karakaš was met with a certain amount of controversy in the author’s home country of Croatia, but it did enjoy some international success. The adaptation rights were acquired even before the official publication of the book, and the team took their time turning the content into a script, and shooting it in authentic and largely inaccessible locations in rural areas of the Lika region, where the plot was also set. The result is Celebration [+see also:
trailer
interview: Bruno Anković
film profile], the debut feature by Bruno Anković, the helmer behind several shorts, which has premiered in the Crystal Globe Competition at Karlovy Vary.

Like the source novel itself, the film follows Mijo, a veteran of the defeated Ustaše Militia in the Yugoslav portion of World War II, as he hides in the woods near his village after the war and reflects on some of the key moments from before the war that led him there. The film opens with a section set shortly after the war, with Mijo (played by Bernard Tomić) in hiding while the winning partisan soldiers are scouring the village for him. The only person who visits him in the woods is his wife, Drenka (Klara Fiolić, in her first big-screen lead role), who tries to persuade him to surrender and hope for mercy, since he himself did not commit any crime.

The story then takes a turn to show us a series of flashbacks describing Mijo’s past, poverty-stricken life in a remote rural area and the traumas that left a mark on him. After the episodes in which the teenage Mijo (newcomer Lars Štern) has to get rid of the family dog following an official order from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia gendarmerie, and in which an even younger Mijo (played by Jan Doležal) witnesses the departure of his grandfather to go off and die in the mountains in order to relieve the family of the burden of caring for him, the plot homes in on the events of April 1941. Then, Mijo, Drenka and her brother Rude (Nedim Nezirović) take a trip across the fields, woods and peaks to attend the local celebration of the declaration of the Independent State of Croatia, which was a Nazi puppet state during the war.

Both in the book and in the movie, it is less about the events, and more about the moods and circumstances of indubitably good man Mijo, and his relationships with his loved ones, farm animals and himself. The book, which was written mostly focusing on descriptions of nature and internal monologues, could have proven to be a tough nut to crack, but scriptwriter Jelena Paljan works wonders here by making minimal, yet necessary, changes to make it more cinematic.

Anković directs the cast and crew to create just the right mood, aiming to achieve maximum authenticity in his depiction of life there and then. The perfectly chosen cast of young, fresh and seasoned actors like Krešimir Mikić and Izudin Bajrović, who play Mijo’s and Drenka’s fathers, respectively, strikes just the right tone to make the harshness of that kind of life and the wisdom it brings appear real and heartfelt. Anković also utilises the naturally dark colours in Aleksandar Pavlović’s cinematography and the music consisting of Alen and Nenad Sinkauz’s short bursts of minimalistic score, complemented by the occasional folk or religious tune and Julij Zornik’s striking sound design, to channel the mood, while editor Tomislav Stojanović keeps the running time to an optimal 86 minutes. In the end, Celebration is a serious and meticulous work of cinema that does not shy away from weighty topics.

Celebration is a co-production between Croatia and Qatar. It was produced by Croatian company Eclectica, with the participation of Pakt Media.