Tito i ja
Yugoslavia / France,
1992, 105 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Goran Markovic
- prod
-
Goran Markovic, Zoran Masirevic, Michel Mavros
- scr
-
Goran Markovic
- cam
-
Racoslav Vladic
- editor
-
Snezana Ivanovic
- cast
-
Dmitrie Vojnov, Lazar Ristovski, Anica Dobra, Pedrag Manojlovic
- source
-
Kino International Corporation
-
COMMENTS
One of four Opening Night films. Goran Markovic in person.
OTHER
Set in Belgrade, 1954, Tito and Me explores the controversial Yugoslavian dictator Joseph Tito and his effect on both the psychological and political climate of the former Yugoslavia, through the eyes of Zoran, the film's winsome young protagonist and narrator. Unable to fit in either at home, where he lives with a rambunctious, politically divided extended family, or at school, where being slightly overweight makes him an automatic outsider, Zoran creates an imaginary friend out of the ominous persona of Marshall Tito. When he wins a schoolwide essay competition on the subject, "Do you love Tito and why?" he is invited to travel to Tito's birthplace with a group of students. Ridiculed and abused by the group's leader, a sadistic Stalinesque schoolteacher, Zoran ultimately learns to question the unconditional devotion a dictator demands of his people and to struggle with the country's pervasive conformism. Director Goran Markovic juxtaposes the innocently comic voice-over of Zoran and a recurring big-band jazz theme by Zoran Simjanovic, with actual newsreel footage of Tito to playfully satirize the hypocrisy of his regime. But underneath his humor, Markovic darkly observes the irresolvable conflicts between the individual and lockstep ideology, attacking the conformism that relentlessly repressed the tensions in Yugoslavia until it was no longer possible to hold them back.
—Lisanne Skyler
FACTOID #81
Anjelica Huston was the first recipient of the Piper-Heidsieck Award in 1991. When Huston received the prize from the champagne maker, she joked, “Can I drink it?”
