Midwinter Night’s Dream

With this sensitive human drama, the master portrayer of human behaviour Goran Paskaljevic returns to his fatherland. He draws a highly intimate picture of the daily life of simple people tainted by the wars in the Balkans, and of the country still struggling with political and economic unrest. The story takes place in Belgrade in the winter of 2004, and the time is marked by the people’s as well as the country’s efforts to recover from the recent past. Three strangers are driven together by fate. Lazar (Ristovski), a Serbian man in his fifties, comes back home after a ten-year absence. He is not returning from abroad, though; gradually, we learn that he was imprisoned for committing a crime. Upon his return, Lazar finds out that his house has been occupied by Bosnian Serb refugees: mother Jasna (Jasna Zalica) and her twelve-year-old autistic daughter Jovana. After initially intending to get rid of the unwanted settlers, Lazar changes his mind and decides to share his house with them. He develops warm affections for the girl, and later on for her mother as well. Both adults bear the burden of their traumas of the past, and it is hard for them to believe that they could live happily ever after. Their happiness is short indeed, doomed to failure by another act of fate, and the future of the country remains uncertain. (LC)