Noticias

The 62nd Pula Film Festival wrapped in Croatia on Saturday with its Best Croatian Film of the year award going to Dalibor Matanic’s The High Sun.

The win could have been anticipated as The High Sun is one of the best received Croatian productions in years, winning rave reviews upon its premiere in Cannes in May.

TheHigh Sun won seven prizes at Pula, including the critics award. It won the Grand Golden Arena for Best Festival Film, and the jury said it chose “the film that has the ability to reach out to the viewers with its message through the great articulated narrative structure and the original actors’ performances.”

The film also won: Golden Arena for Best Director for Dalibor Matanić; Golden Arena for Best Actress for Tihana Lazović; Golden Arena for Best Supporting Actress for Nives Ivanković; Golden Arena for Best Supporting Actor for Dado Ćosić; and Golden Arena for Best Costume Design for Ana...

Adapted by Josip Mlakic from his award-winning novel of the same name and directed by Kristijan Milic, The Living and the Dead (2007) tells the tale of two bands of soldiers who fight under exact same circumstances and in the same location, yet with half a century between them. Originally screened at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2007, Milic's film is now available to own on DVD.

The two stories are skillfully woven together, flashing back and forth over the same geographical locations - most importantly the haunting “Graveyard Field” - as we follow both a group of Hvo soldiers (Croatian Defence Council) in 1993 during the Bosnian War and their Domobran Partisan forebears who occupied Northern Bosnia fifty years prior.

The Living and the Dead is not a political piece that passes comment upon who was right or wrong during the depicted conflicts, instead choosing to focus upon the universal futility of war.