On a paradise island, not everything is as perfect as it seems. A found footage crime film, made out of photographs discovered in a deserted police station, peers behind the warm sunshine and colourful attractions of one of the most popular tourist destinations in Croatia. Spanning decades, and two political systems, the crime scene photographs acquire their own syntax, telling a story of a society and its pathologies.
Country
CroatiaYear
2025Length
23'
Category
Documentary/ experimentalPremiere
Italian
Screenplay
Ivan RamljakEditing
Ivor ŠonjeMusic
Levačić, Križić, Nestorović, ŠestakSound
Hrvoje NikšićProduction
Kreativni sindikatDistribution
Kreativni sindikatSynopsis
Biography
Ivan Ramljak (b. 1974) is a film director and curator. He founded the Human Rights Film Festival Zagreb, hosted Short Tuesday at Tuškanac cinema (2013–2022), and led the Tabor film festival (2016–2023). Since 2022, he selects shorts for Rotterdam Film Festival and scouts features from former Yugoslavia. He has directed 9 shorts, 1 medium-length and 3 features, mostly documentary, shown at 80+ festivals (IFFR, Cinéma du réel, Dok Leipzig, Sarajevo, Dokufest), winning awards, including the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig for his documentary Mirotvorac (Peacemaker).
Statement
The film reuses police archive material documenting crimes committed on a Croatian island between 1979 and 2005. It is assembled from around 10 000 photographs left scattered on the floor of an abandoned police station. Detached from their original investigative context, these images acquire new meanings and begin to speak not only about crime, but about the place in which it occurred. What was originally collected as evidence is transformed into a fragmented portrait of a community, its fears and its silences.
— Ivan Ramljak
Archival materials
Archival photographs found in a deserted police station.
