Jugofilm

Vienna, 1991. Something has shifted overnight. Since then, says Milan, he can remember everything—except the life that came before. In a Serbian immigrant family, the daily radio and television reports about the war in Yugoslavia become a slow-burning fuse with devastating consequences. Nothing is the same anymore. Shortly before his birthday, Saša is drafted into the Serbian army. When he returns to Vienna a year later, silent and changed, suspicion and resentment begin to poison the small community around him. Drawing on memories of his own youth in Vojvodina, Goran Rebić tells this story in a lyrical, almost dreamlike register without ever looking away from the nightmare at its centre. Stylised colours and fleeting visions coexist with a realistic portrait of immigrant life in Vienna, where the distant war leaves visible scars. Rebić refuses easy judgements and instead traces how nationalism and propaganda seep into everyday life, eroding friendships, families and shared certainties. Set between memory and loss, homeland and exile, this melancholy debut is less a film about the front itself than about the moment when history suddenly enters ordinary lives and makes the idea of a “before” seem irretrievably distant. (Florian Widegger)

Goran Rebić (selection): GEKOMMEN BIN ICH DER ARBEIT WEGEN (1987, K), DURING THE MANY YEARS (1991, K), AM RANDE DER WELT (1992), THE PUNISHMENT (2000), DONAU, DUNA, DUNAJ, DUNAV, DUNAREA (2003)