ILLYRICVM

The year is 37 BC. A young Liburnian Volsus is taken by a Roman unit to help in what at first seems a simple task of collecting taxes, but the encounters with local Illyrian tribes soon lead to unexpected turns of events, as they show more resilience to subjugation than meets the eye. We see their archaic, emotional world of quaint and brutal laws and traditions through the eyes of this youngster, regarded by the Romans as a primitive barbarian, and gradually come to understand that their world is not all that different from our own.

“My passionate curiosity for history, archaeology, genetics, and ethnology drives me to question the concept of identity - my own or that of the community I belong to. Yet, what makes the identity of a community? Is it what we call culture? Does it change with time or remains the same in its core? The idea of this film has sprung from curiosity: how different are we, after all, from people who walked the same grounds two thousand years ago? How much of "their" culture and their relation toward the individual or the community have we inherited, if any? Is there any relation between "their" ethics/morality and ours? My intention is to bring our "distant relatives" back to life: their fears, hopes, antagonisms, and love. The intention of the film is to take the viewers on a journey through time, make them voyeurs and witnesses of times long gone, and to give them a documentary insight into people and communities of long ago, who are at the same time distant as cultures and civilizations and yet close to us, not only in terms of geography, but as human beings”.

DIRECTOR: Simon Bogojević Narath. SCREENPLAY: Simon Bogojević Narath, Saša Podgorelec. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Aleksandar Kavić. FILM EDITING: Damir Čučić. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Nedim Cisic. COSTUME DESIGN: Zjena Glamočanin. MUSIC: Mirko Jankov. SOUND: Julij Zornik. CAST: Filip Križan, Labeat Bytyçi, Ylber Bardhi, Robert Prebil, Franjo Dijak, Adrian Pezdirc, Edi Čelić, Alan Katić, Elvis Bošnjak, Ana Takač, Ilir Prashtapica, Jasmin Telalović, Siniša Labrović. PRODUCER: Ankica Juric Tilic. PRODUCTION: Kinorama, Forum Ljubljana, La Sarraz Pictures, Buka Production, SCCA/pro.ba.