Three

THREE

Goran Devic

Croatia, 2008, 26’

AWARDS and FESTIVALS

The Mayor of Prague’s Best Short Film Award, One World Film Festival, 2009

PRESS QUOTE

“The jury was amazed how powerful, multi-layered and bold the story of the three characters unfolds in this half hour film. With very minimalist cinematic means the film reveals the complexity of the political conflict that the characters are passionately discussing. Keeping the approach of ‘less is more’ - the filmmaker uses a small space where there is only room for his camera and one character at a time, the latter sincerely pondering over human conscience and the position of a soldier.” ~ One World

SYNOPSIS

“Do we still need to keep talking about the war?” is the motto of this documentary by Goran Devic, who decided to conduct confessional interviews with three men who were actively involved in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The first is the Serb Novica Kostic, who, despite his best efforts, fails to avoid conscription. During the war he was injured and he now recalls how easily a person can be turned into a “killing machine”. Another protagonist is the rough-edged and slightly cynical Croat Ivica Petric, who joined up voluntarily and was convicted after the war for the murder of 16 Serb civilians. The last of the three is Narcis Misanovic, who saw his father and brother killed in front of his eyes. At the age of 11 he was already working in a military canteen and a few years later was fighting among the ranks of the Bosnian army. These interviews recorded during car journeys really bring the fratricidal conflict home to the viewer. Even though all three fought on different sides, they all agree on the inhumanity and absurdity of the war, the fact that politicians bear the blame, and that today everybody behaves as if nothing happened.