Zečji Nasip (Sandbag Dam), premiering at Berlinale, offers a powerful portrait of community oppression and the secretive spaces many young people are forced to seek out in far too many villages and towns across Europe, despite the progress made over the past twenty years.
Communities are much like rivers; on the surface, they may look calm, peaceful and tranquil, but often wild currents run beneath: currents that can sweep people away. And sometimes all it takes is a deluge of rain for those currents to flood everything in their path. As Zečji Nasip (Sandbag Dam) opens, everything seems calm in a small Croatian village on the banks of a mighty river, but a storm is coming, and for eighteen-year-old Marko (Lav Novosel), life is about to change as a river of suppressed feelings threatens to overflow.
Directed by Čejen Černić Čanak from a screenplay co-written with Tomislav Zajec, Sandbag Dam holds much in common with last year’s underrated Three Kilometres to the End of the World as it focuses on the restrictive community norms, hidden rules and expectations that make up Marko’s small village: a village where many young people dream of escape, others are forced to leave, and some accept that to remain a part of community life they must adhere to the adult expectations placed upon them.
On the surface, Marko’s life appears calm; he lovingly cares for his younger brother Fićo (Leon Grgić), who loves rabbits and the bedtime stories Marko reads him. He has a girlfriend, Petra (Franka Mikolaci), who adores him and his future is mapped out as a car mechanic with his dad once he has finished school. On top of that, Marko is popular and athletic and is training to be a championship arm wrestler. But for all the certainty and surface security, a part of Marko’s life remains hidden: a close friendship with a neighbour, Slaven, in his mid-teens. Slaven suddenly vanished years ago, as his parents rejected him, forcing him to leave for a new life in Berlin, but now, following the death of his dad, Slaven (Andrija Žunac) has returned, and with him come the memories Marko has tried so hard to bury.
In 2024, LGBTIQ at a crossroads: progress and challenges, published by the European Union, found that only 28% of LGBTIQ people surveyed in Croatia felt they could be open about their sexual orientation in public, compared to an average of 51% across the EU. Like Romania, the focus of Three Kilometres to the End of the World, rural communities in Croatia are often even more conservative than many cities or towns, leaving little space for LGBTQIA young people to be themselves, leading many to either leave when they can do so or hide if leaving isn’t an option.
Čejen Černić Čanak and Tomislav Zajec powerfully explore this reality as Slaven returns to his village, knowing that he is now an outsider, with his mum unwilling to discuss her late husband’s actions in forcing him to leave, yet also desperate to find some way to reconnect now that her husband is no longer there. But this isn’t a village where men carry all the power, like the Romanian village in Emanuel Pârvu’s film; it is a place where homophobia knows no gender boundaries, and women isolate and oppress their children as freely as men.
As the undercurrents of village life break the surface, and the history between Marko and Slaven is slowly revealed, Zečji Nasip (Sandbag Dam) focuses its lens not on the adults and the whispers that quickly circulate in a community where everyone knows everyone else’s business but the emotional relationship between Marko and Slaven, with some of the films most powerful scenes the quiet moments between both boys: moments where the outside world vanishes allowing the teenage bond they held to find healing.
In these scenes, the natural performances of Lav Novosel and Andrija Zunac are stunning as the boys, for just a moment, forget the restrictions surrounding them and their past pain and hurt, embracing freedom, love, and reconnection away from the judgmental eyes of others.
Zečji Nasip (Sandbag Dam) offers a powerful portrait of community oppression and the secretive spaces that many young people are forced to seek in far too many villages and towns across Europe, despite the progress made over the past twenty years. Marko Brdar’s handheld cinematography and Domas Strupinskas’ edgy yet unintrusive score beautifully complement Čejen Černić Čanak’s natural direction as a community surrounds itself with psychological sandbags that aim to keep some people in and others firmly out.
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