More than 20.000 people saw Dalibor Matanić's latest film The Lika Cinema, which made it last year's most viewed Croatian movie. It is the fifth movie from one of the best known directors of the younger generation in Croatia. Similar to his previous works (Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside, Fine Dead Girls, 100 Minutes Of Glory, and I love you), it shows a tendency towards authenticity which sometimes verges on the grotesque.  

Lika Cinema's scenario was adapted from a book of stories by Damir Karakas. Set in an isolated mountain village in Lika, a part of Croatia where Matanić draws his roots, the grotesque drama follows three main narrative threads played out against the backdrop of an upcoming referendum on the country's accession to the European Union. It is a story about the village's star football player Mike, who accidentally kills his mother before his tryout for a foreign team he doesn't want to join; a story about a lonely fat girl Olga, who is so desperate for a friend and for a lover that she ends up seeking both in a pig-sty; and finally a story of the peasant Joso, who, risking his sick son's life, finds the real misery in loneliness. Southeast Europe: People and Culture spoke to the young filmmaker in an interview.

The script for the movie is based on Damir Karakas's book, a collection of extremely naturalistic, grotesque and hyperbolic stories. Did you have to censure Karakas or even yourself in order to make the movie a commercial success?

Karakas's book was the basis of the film. I wanted to take a non-commercial direction as a way of articulating his radicalism – I took no interest in the market or the audience. What makes me feel good is that even then we filled the theatres. That gives me faith. Speculating how a film will be received has a negative impact on the cultural element in creating films. If you start to think too much about others and less about yourself, then the final product will often end in disaster.

After the film festivals in Pula and Sarajevo, the movie had its premiere in the heart of Lika, in the town of Gospić. How did the people the movie directly talks about react?

The most important thing was for the audience to face this kind of a movie. The atmosphere in the theatre was electrified and uncertain, but when the people saw the movie they realised it is an honest approach, though perhaps a little brutal. I didn't add anything to make look people uglier or prettier than they are. I find people beautiful just the way they are. When the audience realised this, it was much easier for them to accept and love the film.

Where else have you presented the film? How was it ranked in festivals?

After the premiere in Gospić the movie was played in domestic theatres as well as worldwide. After the opening in Pula Film Festival, we headed to Sarajevo and from there on a festival trail (Ljubljana, Belgrade, Skopje, Portugal, Ghent, Leeuwarden, Montpellier). We received three awards in just ten days (A/N two Golder Arenas in Pula and Young audience award in Montpellier), which was a great feeling.

However, the movie caused some criticism and was attacked in Croatia, including an attempt to prohibit it. Did you ever consider that this could really happen?

I don't really care about the reactions of people who don't understand what I'm talking about or people who don't want to understand. When I did my first movie Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside, they tried to forbid it before it even got out of my studio, so I learned what it's like. Therefore, I only have one way to go; it's the "head against the wall" way. I know what I'm talking about in a movie and I don't make movies to have them forbidden. It's interesting; everyone who attempts to ban something in the name of humanism automatically ends up attacking it.

It seems that conservative currents were provoked by this movie more than by your previous ones. Is it more dangerous today to talk about villagers and pigs than about lesbians and AIDS?

What is very important to me is that The Lika Cinema is a very honest and intimate movie, so I am not concerned at all whether it provokes people or not. When I'm directing a movie, my only concern is to make it as good as possible. What happens to it later on depends on the context and the audience. But what made me concerned at one point was that people today have turned out to be more conservative and even more reserved than ten years ago. And that provokes me as an author even more. On the other hand, people have lost the habit of going to the cinema, which is not only a problem in Croatia. A sold out premiere in Pula and two nights in Sarajevo, before the whole rush about the movie began, brought back my faith in people when I thought the worst.

It is considered that you made not a native movie, but one that sincerely pictures the environment outside the coordinates of [film director Emir] Kusturica that feed the European prejudices about the Balkans. Is this a message to other authors from the region to make movies that talk about Croatia without exotic, mostly imagined, details?

The problem with Kusturica is that he imposed an image of the Balkans that some people, out of their own Western perspective, wish to preserve. My movies have nothing to do with that. People here aren't ridiculous nor do you see goose flying over their heads. This Balkan mystic melted in an attempt to live normally, without East-West bifurcation. An interesting thesis was set: The Lika Cinema has been put in the context of Eastern radical films, which analyses everyday living and diametrically opposes Kusturica's ideal image of the Balkans. Western nations need to abandon their comfortable point of view, which from our perspective is an equivalent to us responding to Armenia and Georgia by saying that we are doing fine but they are a little underdeveloped. That's all nonsense. We all have the same issues, only on different terms.

Does making movies with public money, as most movies here are still made, automatically imply a sort of responsibility to make movies that speak positively about the Croatians?

What's really positive in our film financing model is that there is no censorship. The situation is absolutely positive in the way that state money doesn't oblige you to make a picture book about Croatia. The basic of the film culture is to be free from any kind of control. Our model of film production as a national and cultural good is an inheritance from the socialist days. In fact, it is also similar to the Danish model, which I find to be the most developed one in Europe. I consider commercialisation negative because the economy here is still weak. Attempts of so called producers of cinematography - common for example in Germany - produce bad creative results because everything is measured by the market, outflanking the public and measuring success purely on the number of visitors in cinemas. Respect the audience and give them the best you can, and they will understand.

What will your next movie be about? Is there a comedy underway?

Next winter in Zagreb we'll start shooting my sixth movie called Mother of asphalt. It will be a very harsh women's movie about the local mentality and putridity of marriage. I'm going to deal with human relations and the eternal hunger for love. As for comedies, I can't wait for the situation to get better so that I can make one, especially since I am known for my bad jokes. But it's not the right time yet, it wouldn't be honest to do something that is an escape from everyday life.

Are you optimistic about Croatian society?

I would be optimistic if it would accept the European code of conduct – cultural conduct and a culture of living. But everything in between is a disaster. Our selling out to the West is terrible; people are getting lost in transition. I believe we [Croatians] all have predispositions to be a small escapist European oasis, but we don't work hard enough on that. Culturists here are still ahead of everyone else in this regard. When I'm doing a movie I consider it to be part of the European tradition, not a local one. I automatically place my various thoughts within a European context. East or Southeast European is irrelevant, but European is important. People at international festivals find this acceptance of the general code of conduct interesting, which is especially important in order to open up and erase the borders within Europe.

Find out more: www.dalibormatanic.com
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