Lisice

The unforgiving mountains of Dalmatinska Zagora, 1948:  local village/party chief Andria – who ‘pulled for Stalin’ we hear – joins the wedding procession of Ante (the soulful Savagovic) and Visnja (Kaloper), shadowed by two leather caps, Titoist political police intent on making an arrest, of quite whom no one knows. Papic’s forceful, controlled film describes a society corrupted, frightened and self-destructing in a wave of poverty, theft, insecurity, random acts of violence, rape and rampant abuses of power. Of course, Papic was taking advantage of the brief political thaw in ’60s Yugoslavia, using his critical eye to make telling points about his own times, not least Croatia’s endemic and enduring oppression of women.