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Ivan is a 36-year old
crippled war veteran, an ex-rock singer, who
lost both legs some 15 years ago during the
Homeland War in Croatia, when Serbian
paramilitary soldiers forced him to walk
through a minefield. Now, bound to a wheel
chair, Ivan is facing the harsh reality of
his everyday life: his ex-wife Marta and is
about to leave for good to New Zealand,
taking with her their 8 year old son, Josip.
His fellow ex-comrades-in-arms are
continuingly committing suicides and Ivan’s
only choice is to live with his mother and
father. Occasionally he visits prostitutes
and smokes grass he buys from a local
dealer. Ivan’s father Izidor, who was a
political prisoner many years ago in the
former Yugoslavia, is now running for
Croatian Parliament as an independent
candidate. Ivan refuses to participate in
his father’s campaign, feeling that he would
be used for his father’s own political
goals.
The problems start when Simo, an
impoverished Serbian refugee who has spent
the last 12 years in exile in Serbia,
returns to the town. Simo unexpectedly
visits Ivan’s father Izidor to extort some
money from him, in order to renovate his
long-abandoned house. Simo knows a certain
secret from the past which can ruin Izidor’s
political career. It was Simo who, as a
communist official, imprisoned Izidor 37
years ago on political charges. Besides
this, Izidor soon discovers that his wife
Ana, Ivan’s mother, has slept with Simo 37
years ago, in order to help Izidor while he
was in prison. Simo unexpectedly returns to
the house to see Ana while Izidor was out
campaigning. Ana shoots Simo, trying to hide
the fact that he is actually Ivan’s
biological father. Soon Izidor joins Ana in
getting rid of the dead body, thus trying to
prevent the investigation lead by a police
inspector, while Ivan refuses to participate
in their dealings.
But the truth about Ivan’s biological father
soon comes to the surface and Ivan loses the
very last of the reasons that kept him
alive. He decides to end his life, without
actually committing suicide, by provoking
hard-line Croatian nationalists by singing
Serbian nationalistic songs. At first he
doesn’t succeed, so he ends up in a mental
institution, in a room with other patients
suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder. His father Izidor visits him and
tries to get him out of the institution.
However, Izidor’s efforts are unsuccessful
and Ivan finally manages to provoke mental
patients, who were prisoners in Serbian
concentration camps, to kill him. While Ivan
is being smothered to death by his provoked
roommates, his ex-wife Marta comes to the
institution with their son Josip to pay a
visit to Ivan before leaving for good.
Ivan’s son fails to recognize that his
father is now dead, gets disappointed that
Ivan doesn’t want to talk to him and
together with Marta leaves the institution. |
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NOTE: The story is not told in chronological
order. |
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