Retrospective 2019

Nasvidenje v naslednji vojni

Farewell Until the Next War
Živojin Pavlović
YUG 1980
117 min
V'19

The cynically (i.e. prophetically) titled FAREWELL UNTIL THE NEXT WAR was Živojin Pavlović’s second, and last look at World War II in Yugoslavia and is by far most ambitious, honest, bitter, and controversial partisan film produced in the country that was to collapse into flames and genocide only a decade later. Based on an equally uncompromising novel by Vitomil Zupan, the enfant terrible of Yugoslavian literature, NASVIDENJE V NASLEDNJI VOJNI continues the comprehensive deconstruction and demythologization of the official narrative of partisan heroism started by Pavlović three years previously with HAJKA. At first, this lavish production hints at yet another heroic spectacle, but soon descends into the murky, base corners of the human psyche, showing war for what it is on the ground: tragic madness that brings the worst out in human beings. The story of NASVIDENJE begins years after the war, when two former mortal enemies, a Slovenian partisan and a German soldier who fought in Yugoslavia, meet while vacationing in Spain and proceed to invoke and discuss their experiences of wartime from two (not so different) perspectives. Hailed in some liberal corners as the partisan film to end all partisan films at the time of its release and sharply criticized from the more official side (especially by Milutin Čolić, Yugoslavia’s first and foremost reference in the field) as the “strictly subjective” work of a “misanthrope” artist, NASVIDENJE V NASLEDNJI VOJNI is today rightly considered a classic.

Credits
  • Hans Christian Blech
  • Metod Pevec
  • Boris Juh
  • Milan Puzić
  • Tanja Poberžnik
  • Ivo Ban
  • Jožica Avbelj
  • Janez Starina
  • Barbara Levstik
  • Zvone Hribar
  • Jože Horvat
  • Ruth Gassman
  • Živojin Pavlović
  • nach einem Roman von Vitomil Zupan
  • Tomislav Pinter
  • Olga Skrigin
  • Bojan Adamič
Viba film, Ljubljana, Vesna film, Ljubljana
35 mm
col
Related Movies