Stric

At the beginning of the film a plate breaks; a bad omen, the veracity of which is confirmed as the story progresses. Father, mother and the grown-up son have thrown themselves into their most beautiful eighties outfits, the Christmas tree is lit up and the Christmas goose sits roasted on the table. Everything has to be just right since the uncle from the West, where everything is better, is on the way in his Mercedes to grace his family, back home in the Croatian part of Yugoslavia, with his presence. And yet why do the three allow themselves to be bossed around by the autocratic old man? The narrative structure of David Kapac and Andrija Mardesić's chamber play is reminiscent of that of "Groundhog Day"; behind which a threat à la Haneke's "Funny Games" lurks. Gradually, the reasons for this annual Christmas celebration, anachronistic in every sense as they are, become apparent. The vicious circle of violence and helplessness presented here can be interpreted as a parable of the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s, but also as an indication of the self-colonisation of a region that always looks up to "Europe" and loses all sense of self-worth in the process. With its deconstruction of 1980s nostalgia, uncompromising nature and nerve-wracking tension, the work demonstrates a more overarching universality.

Text: Kira Taszman
English: Peter Rickerby

Kammerbühne: Original version with English subtitles + German simultaneous translation.

Obenkino: original version with English subtitles