Okupacija, 27. slika

Very few films would be able to excite the kind of passion generated by Lordan Zafranović’s Occupation in 26 Pictures (1978). This artistic metaphor for the occupation of the director’s native Dalmatia during the Second World War screened in competition at Cannes; it also took away an award from the Pula festival and received rave reviews both in the former Yugoslavia and beyond the country’s borders. Nevertheless, the film incensed the influential Zagreb-based youth magazine Polet, and a number of Dubrovnik inhabitants continue to see it as a propaganda film with fabricated details by an author they regard as a traitor. “If a film doesn’t cause a scandal, it shouldn’t have been made in the first place,” says Zafranović as he strolls around Prague, where he currently lives and where he also studied at the end of the 1960s. Croatian filmmaker Pavo Marinković offers up an intriguing and lively documentary mosaic which follows the career of this controversial figure, from his early days on set and his success on the world stage, to the period that necessitated artistic compromise during the communist era. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)