During a winter weekend, sisters Anica and Irena, accompanied by Irena’s two children, travel to an island to visit their father and brother Ivan, a quiet loner. The reason for the gathering is their father’s decision to sell the family land. Confined to the worn-down family house, the family members are forced to confront long-suppressed tensions and difficult choices, while one of them will have to make the ultimate sacrifice.
“I know that I like a film to ‘bathe’ in atmosphere. The poet Paul Valéry says that every poem oscillates between meaning and sound. If, in his equation, meaning is what we derive from the narrative, that is, from the sequence of events, then what he calls sound I would call atmosphere – something less tangible. What I mean is that when I begin working on a new film, I don’t start with meaning, but with a feeling.” (Zvonimir Jurić)
Zvonimir Jurić
Born in 1971 in Osijek, Croatia, Jurić is based in Zagreb. He graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art in 1999 with a degree in Film and TV Directing. Despite having made only three feature-length films, Jurić is regarded as one of Croatia’s most prominent filmmakers. His documentaries and short films have earned him several prizes, while his feature film The Blacks won the Kingfisher Award at the Ljubljana International Film Festival.