Wanderlust

Giuseppe is an old Italian from Istria who sets off eastwards to look for a wife. Dressed in his father’s military uniform that his mother has put on him, he sets off, in the hope that a warm welcome will await him as an Italian. He travels across Hungary, Yugoslavia and Montenegro, but he only meets people who want something from him: a lodging-house landlady who wants to marry him, a businessman who wants to start a travel agency with him in Montenegro. The film is a portrait of the fate of ordinary people in Central and Eastern Europe. Giuseppe’s life is described in a nutshell, as is the former Eastern block at the end of the century. Giuseppe observes the turbulence in this part of the world, in which he recognises many of his own experiences: his country also suffered under the yoke of fascism, has also been torn apart by civil wars, until not much was left of the once so great empire. Zilnik tries to find an answer to the question of how people can bear these defeats and why they continue as they do. Many Yugoslavian films have previously tried to and found an answer in fate, the people’s unrestrained nature or the arrogance of the leaders. Zilnik takes a different position: he thinks that the failures are a logical consequence of decades of willingness to support one’s own leaders, without ever looking across the borders to see how others live.