Just Between us is a wicked, indiscreet contemporary story set in Zagreb about the whirling erotic passions that percolate beneath the dull, composed surface of everyday bugeois life and manners. It is about things that happen in well-established families that are mainly kept secret, but that nevertheless remain painful. We meet two brothers, their wives and lovers - and their children who do not know who their real fathers are. Double lives and parallel relationships are blended into a bittersweet story about the relentless quest for love and happines, about passion that never ceases, and the terrible consequences that arise, even by chance, when one ends up in a bed that is not one's own.
CAST AND CREW
directed by Rajko Grlić
screenplay Ante Tomić and Rajko Grlić
cast Miki Manojlović, Bojan Navojec, Ksenija Marinković, Daria Lorenci, Nataša Dorčić,
Nina Ivanišin
cinematograpy Slobodan Trninić
costumography Blanka Budak
art direction Ivo Hušnjak
make-up Mojca Gorogranc
editor Andrija Zafranović
key grip Dean Brkić
music Stanko Juzbašić
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Today we can arise in sociology literature on contention that a spousal cheat, love adventure or how ever we called it, is the only permanent shape revolt which is left to individual against predictive of life. Our life is bound with our employer, family, church, state, media and money. And we can't change nothing about it, cause the values are deeply embed and not totter. The only one left we could change is a person with whom we share our bed. So nowdays adulterers swiched over yesterday's revolutionarys, rebels, visionarys, brigands. Affection of insurrection, sweetness of breaking rules and danger of departure into not known, sociologists are allowing, is reduced on adventure called adultery. And adding that more less all societies, in spite of aloud judgements, are by implication allowing that, like a minimized danger for themselves. From the other side psychiatrists are for decades assuring us that deeply in root of every demand is to jump out of the annoying everyday life. So in aged argument of every "creation" and "insurrection", lie forceful, barely reacheable and more heavier predictive "sexual instinct".
I have, as more less everyone of us, heard counless stories about the adventures, adulteries and incredible double lives. And I was always, have to admit, demonstrating overt admiration acording fascinating energies and quantities of fantasy wich some persons invested in. That were "rebellious" and "creative" acmes of their lives.
Coupling of these three premises we arrive to my personal reason for making this movie. I am in the ages when is good to get back where I started to talk movie stories: on the streets, in apartments and beds of Zagreb. Five stories about five middle-aged heroes whose Ante Tomic and me are opening with dramatics of "babuska", in which is under every patch another one, it seems to me the most approximate for the city, moment, life in it, and for me as well.
I imagined playful movie filled with life, dense in texture, active in camera, agile in naration and almost documentary in acting game. It is blankly direct, at some places nearly brutal, in contact with privacy, attempt to bite under skin, under something visible. It will be a movie with extremely close up frames dedicated to a face and great totals dedicated to a town, place where I was born and people with who I shared it. Briefly, it's urban movie which gambles with everyday life as it would leave any minor sign beside the line about us, here and today.
FESTIVALS (selected)
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2010. Pula Film Festival 2010. Herceg Novi Filmski Festival 2010. Festival glumačkih ostvarenja Niš 2010. GSIFF New York 2010 International Film Festival. Festival International Du Film D'amour de Mons 2011. Festróia - Tróia International Film Festival 2011. Raindance Film Festival 2011.
AWARDS (selected)
45th KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Crystal Globe, best director award, European Screens Label - award for the best European film); 57th PULA FILM FESTIVAL (The Grand Golden Arena for the best film, The Golden Arena for the best direction, The Golden Arena for the best actress in a supporting role, The Golden Arena for the best cinematography, The Golden Arena for the best sound, The Golden Arena for the best score, The Golden Arena for the best art direciton, FEDEORA award (Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean); 24th HERCEG NOVI FESTIVAL (The Gold Mimosas award for the best director); 45th NIS FILM FESTIVAL OF THE ACTING ACHIEVEMENTS (Czar Constantin for the best actor in the leading role; audience award for the best actor, critic's award for the best actor), ; GSIFF NEW YORK 2010 INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (best film, best actor). 27th FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM D'AMOUR DE MONS (Prix Cinnefemme); 27th FESTRÓIA - TRÓIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Silver Dolphin). 14th RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL (best international feature); RIVERSIDE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (best feature film).
