'Garbura': a film about the end of childhood, which is more beautiful and honest than the imposed pattern of behavior in the family
The feature film debut "Garbura" by director Josip Žuvan will bring back to childhood those adults in smaller communities as well as among people you know or at least once knew
Twelve-year-olds Nikola and Antonio are best friends and neighbours. They amuse themselves by lighting firecrackers, and record their escapades and post them on YouTube, hoping for millions of views. Their families have been at odds for years and oppose their friendship. When the holiday season comes, the quarrel between the family will escalate and spill over into the relationship between the two friends.
Festival hit in San Sebastián
This coming-of-age drama premiered at the prestigious festival in San Sebastián and closed the New Directors competition program. The multi-minute applause, reactions and comments from the audience were more than excellent because everyone obviously managed to connect with the film and did not get "lost in translation".
Why not, since the film's depiction of family is truly universal for everyone. Because if you haven't experienced things like lighting carabinets that the two young actors do in the movie, you surely know someone who has done it, or you've heard various comments from older people about some other inappropriate behavior of your peers, even if they weren't as devastating as carabinets or shooting from pistol.
As it once was, so it will remain
Families quarreling for reasons they don't even remember well enough, parents preoccupied with their own things, so they don't know where their children are, and those same children to whom the generational conflict is passed on. If not firsthand, then you know about such events from the eyes of observers.
The director of this realistic, quite funny and charming, but not at all artificial and romanticized film about childhood is Josip Žuvan, who, in addition to working as a director, salso a screenwriter and creative producer on many commercial television projects, and the author of several short feature films. Garbura had its Croatian premiere at this year's Zagreb Film Festival.
Fragments of real life on film
For the two best friends who embodied Nikola and Antonio, and around whom the film revolves, he chose excellent young debutants Frank Floigle and Mauro Ercegović Gracin. Other roles include Ljubomir Bandović, Marija Škaričić, Ivana Roščić, Asja Jovanović and Zdenko Jelčić.
Although the characters are not based on those from real life, some of their characteristics are, as are the events in the film and the way of communication, all from the memory of director Josip Žuvan.
Garbura is a film that will make you laugh, keep you tense like the burning of a karabit, garbura, and give you a piece of the picture of what you might once have been able to witness yourself, and that gives the film that greater value - a sense of nostalgia and reality.
In cinemas from 29.12.
This article was provided by KINO FILM.HR
