Film Archive

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Filmstill Valerija

Valerija

Valerija
Sara Jurinčić
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Croatia
2023
15 minutes
Croatian
Subtitles: 
English

Two women take the ferry to an island cemetery to tend to a gravesite. With the utmost care and perseverance, they remove moss and candle wax from the stone, wash and scrub every chink, trim flower arrangements and set up lights that flash in different colours at night.

It is a work of mourning under special circumstances, as Sara Jurinčić makes plain in an early shot: She edits two picture galleries next to each other, one of male, the other of female portraits. The men suddenly vanish from their photos and thus from the island. The faces of the women remain. And it is these portraits, motifs chosen by themselves for their gravestones, that dominate the film, give a face to its experimental explorations of female genealogy. Jurinčić wraps them in visual metaphors of extraordinary intricacy, sometimes literally as in the spectacular finale, when the portraits of the dead women are superimposed on the faces of the living women – with an eerie effect that is as disturbing as it is sublime.

Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sara Jurinčić
Cinematographer
Ivan Slipčević
Producer
Vanja Jambolic
World Sales
Marcella Jelić