CROATIAN PREMIERES

Realigments

Over the past three, turbulent film months, the Croatian public has been presented with three new feature films, and with three different film models in the new order of Croatian cinema. The epic Four Abreast by Jakov Sedlar, with its controversial evocations of the Bleiburg slaughter of Croatians after WWII, represents the hard line and high budget propaganda of »state« cinema.

The satire awakened in the ghost of Josip Broz Tito in the comedy Marshal by Vinko Brešan has remained within the framework of the middle of the road film and in the style of his first comedy How the War Started on My Island. The youngest member of this directorial threesome, Ognjen Sviličić, with his first feature film If I Could be a Shark, has shown himself to be an author with a tendency toward »deviate« poetics and stylization.

Diana Nenadić