Writing
Socialist Bosnia, 1981. In the small town of Međugorje, a group of children tell the local priest, a Croat named Father Joza, that the Virgin Mary appeared before them. Ecstatic about the prospect of a miracle, he publicly announces that he believes in the apparition, putting a target on his back, with the communist authorities deciding to start their own investigation into the case.
Zagreb, 1945. The communist partisans emerge victorious in the Balkan branch of the the conflicts that made up The Second World War. With vengeance in their hearts, they force the remaining soldiers of the Axis Power-adjacent ustaše and the Croatian Home Guard and force them in a march towards the Bleiburg field in Austria, leaving them without food or water and in a constant cycle of walking for days on end.
In the mid-18th century, the modern day border between Bosnia and Croatia, wasn't just a border between two countries. It was a border between two political powers,The Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire, and their respective religions, Christianity and Islam. But, in the midst of that passionate conflict between the East and the West, a romance blossoms between Ivan Revač, a young Croatian assasin working for a local aristocrat, and Leyla, the daughter of an Ottoman bey.
In this politically charged drama, the turbulent times just following Marshal Tito's rejection of ties to Moscow comes to life. Interestingly, even in the first few years after the Yugoslavian leader's death, the subject matter of this film was considered too hot to handle, and the director had to appeal to the courts for permission to shoot it. In the story, Martin is a schoolboy with a sense of the absurd and a willingness to use ridicule to amuse himself and his classmates. He has an uncle who is high up in the nation's bureaucracy who protects him and his grandfather now that his father has died. His grandfather is too stubborn to give his farm to the local farming collective, and Martin himself is in hot water with the principal for making fun of his girlfriend, one of the students at the high school. However, as long as the uncle is able to protect them, they remain out of hot water.
