Želimir Žilnik

The Second Generation

Director	Želimir Žilnik
Country of production:	Yugoslavia
Year of production:	1983
Duration:	90 min
Sound:	Karolj Štanjo, Martin Jankov
Camera:	Ljubomir Bečejski
Editing:	Slobodan Jandrić
Cast:	Vladimir Sinko, Petar Bosančić, Sanja Zlatković
Production:	Art Film, TV Novi Sad

Film plot

After 11 years spent in Stuttgart, 15 year old Pavle Hromis returns to his home land, to his grandmother's house in Kucura, to complete the education in Yugoslavia. During his first week, the boy gets confused with new surroundings, different educational program, and unfamiliar society. After the quarrel with his grandmother and conflict with school friends, Pavle runs back to Germany. However, his parents are not willing to repeat the enrolment procedure, because they intend to go back to Yugoslavia in a year or two, and his former friends have already given him up. When they start teasing him for his country's poverty and primitivism, Pavle defends himself and starts looking at his previous experiences in an entirely new light. Pavle returns to Yugoslavia, to a new boarding school in the city of Novi Sad, where he meets other children with similar background (from Australia, Canada, Austria...). Although at first it seems that Pavle's problems came to an end, very soon he gets into troubles with his new girlfriend and boarding school officials... Pavle's family is concerned about his loosing control. In such situation, Pavle decides to change his life - telling nobody, he breaks off a friendship and enrols Police high school. He becomes an exemplary student...

Festivals

20 Festival internazionale: Cinema Giovani, Torino, 1984
Pula Film Festival, 1983
Berlin Film Festival ("Panorama"), 1984

Želimir Žilnik is the author devoted to contemporary topics, which include social, political, and economic criticism of a daily life. His first films were documentaries: Journal about Youth in the Country, in the Winter (1967), Little Pioneers, We’re Quite an Army, Every Day Do We Grow like Green Grass (1968), Unemployed People (1968), and June Events (1968). Student protests in 1968 are the topic of his first feature film "Early Works" (1969). The "Early Works" was immediately forbidden to be screened, with the argument that it insulted public moral and had bad influence on youth education. At Berlin Festival, the film was awarded with Grand Prix. After the screening of his new film, "Freedom or Comic" (1972), was forbidden, Žilnik immigrated to Germany. In Germany, where he shot a serious of documentaries on immigrants, Žilnik created the documentary "Public Execution" (1975). This film is the only German documentary banned immediately after its origination. In it, the director deals with South American terrorist gang which was, immediately after the robbery, killed in front of TV cameras. In late 70s, Žilnik went back to Yugoslavia, and continued his work on documentary, rare feature films, and documentary TV dramas. Until 2001, he shot eight feature films, 27 documentaries, and 11 TV dramas. All these creations have a recognisable author’s characteristic – both in thematic and poetic sense. Besides the films "Pretty Women’re Walking through the Town" (1985) and "This is how the Steel Was Tempered" (1988), where the leading roles were played by professional actors – in all other ones – both documentaries and feature films - Žilnik mostly engaged non-professional actors. In the majority of cases they play themselves. In Žilnik’s films of 90s, such as "Tito among the Serbs for the Second Time" (1994) and "Marble Ass" (1995) the non-professional actors also play roles. Želimir Žilnik’s film opus was marked with a recognisable author’s style: minimalist film poetics, the demystification of various social concerns, and exceptionally cheap films in sense of production.