CROATIAN PREMIERES

Mother of God, or the Croatian Film of Regression

After several short documentaries, the young Croatian filmmaker Neven Hitrec made his first feature film Mother of God (Bogorodica). Written by his father, the writer and politician Hrvoje Hitrec, and based on his novel »Croatian Mother of God«, the film deals with the beginning of the Serbian aggression against Croatia during the summer of 1999. It tries to unite several motifs and subplots with the initial one being a love triangle involving young village teacher Ana (played by Lucija Šerbedžija), carpenter Kuzma (Ljubo Kerekeš) and Ana’s fiancé \ uka (Goran Navojec).

The second motif, and the central one in the plot, is the suffering of Slavonia’s Croats as a result of the Serbian aggression, and this includes Kuzma’s new family — Ana and their little son who become models for Kuzma’s Mother of God altarpiece. Although focused on individuals, Hitrec’s work reflects the broader and irreconcilable conflict between two nationalities living together.

With its epic structure, shifting focus, symbolic and stereotyped characters, as well as dynamic camera movement and editing work used to depict the monstrosity of the enemy (especially the cruelty of Serbian bad guy Rade), Mother of God is mainly perceived as unbalanced and a belated propaganda feature. Within the context of the Croatian cinema of the 90’s, mostly marked by the postmodern genre cinema of young filmmakers, it can also be taken as representative of the Croatian film of »regression«.

Diana Nenadić