Tako se kalio čelik

When filming a tottering statue, you can either show whatever remains of its symbolic glory or focus on the cracks that are making it collapse. Yet Želimir Žilnik finds a third way here, by both foreseeing the fall to come as well as examining the absurd existence of those that still live in the shadow of the statue. All this is very metaphorical, of course, as the director focuses on another breaking point of socialism once again. The end is indeed near in this satirical comedy which follows Leo, a steel worker who, like everybody else, only wants to get what he thinks he deserves. The system is already dead. The whole film unfolds like the sequences of panic in disaster films, only that it’s not about actual survival here but rather feathering one’s own nest. “It’s war, baby,” says the head of the steel mill, as he raises his air gun aimed at the twilight of socialism. Leo is more interested in romantic encounters, however. He falls for a teenager and his wife leaves him. In the midst of all this immorality and corruption, some foreign collectors of socialist realism remains offer Leo a way out and years later he returns with a Cadillac. Thus this symbol of American wealth replaces the old statue but, as history taught us, it’s not for the better. (Patrick Holzapfel)

In the presence of Želimir Žilnik. 

Želimir Žilnik: NEWSREEL ON VILLAGE YOUTH, IN WINTER (1967, K), THE UN- EMPLOYED (1968, K), JUNE TURMOIL (1969, K), BLACK FILM (1971, K), THE WOMEN ARE COMING (1972), VERA AND ERŽIKA (1981), THE FIRST TRIMESTER OF PAVLE HROMIŠ (1983), STANIMIR DESCENDING (1984), THE SECOND GENERATION (1984), GOOD MORNING BELGRADE (1985), MARBLE ASS (1995), KENEDI GOES BACK HOME (2003), EUROPE NEXT DOOR (2005), OUR MAN IN GABON (2014), LOGBOOK SERBISTAN (2015), THE MOST BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD (2018), AMONG THE PEOPLE: LIFE & ACTING (2018