Miroslav Sikavica

Planes, tanks, bombs, assault rifles, media and propaganda – they were all weapons used in the Homeland War. However, it was the songs that were were louder than everything else. Some used them to describe the nightmare around them, others manifested their political loyalty. The national television and radio considered songs an important means of political “struggle”, so they commissioned, financed, recorded and aired them intensively. Even some twenty years after these events, the wartime soundtrack still draws attention and triggers emotions.

After money that was being saved for a man's funeral mysteriously vanishes, chaotic disarray begins growing within a family's ranks, turning the once peaceful and mournful family members into an angry mob driven by emotions, whilst decades old relationships and patriarchal structures begin to show their cracks, with the man's widow deciding to stand up for herself and find a new place for each of them among the newfound chaos.

The beating and subsequent death of Zagreb's high school senior student Luka Ritz in 2008 and a several-month-long search for juvenile perpetrators shocked the Croatian public and induced an unprecedented civil campaign against the escalation of youth violence. "The Cloud" is an intimate story that took place beyond the reach of all publicity: an emotional story about the traumatic loss of the only son, the best friend and the first boyfriend. The 78-minute-long documentary film that follows Luka's parents, friends and his girlfriend in their everyday struggle with anger, grief and disappointment, anxiety and memories, over the period of one year after his death. At the same time this is a story about the need and importance of civil solidarity and activism in today's society.

A rashly accepted job at a construction site in a coastal resort becomes a pain in the neck of a backhoe loader operator from the hinterland who, in order to retain paternal authority and get the legal, but dirty demolition work done, needs to remove an unwanted witness.