Short

|

9’

|

Just Between Us

Među nama

On her first return to her hometown in 15 years, Ema is forced to deal with painful memories which made her leave in the first place.

Young adult woman Emma returns to her hometown for the first time in fifteen years, after she finds out that her father had a stroke. On her return she is forced to deal with painful memories which made her leave in the first place. The film follows the present and the past, which are represented through different treatment of audio and visual elements. The characters from the past are semi-transparent while the sounds are distant and muffled. 
After spending some time in her family house, Ema finds a bunch of snowballs and recalls that her father was sexually abusing her when she was a child. Each time he would do that, he would bring her a snowball as a gift. Even though he's powerless now, she relives the fear of being close to him and cannot find the strength to take care of him.
In the end, she leaves the town again, leaving her father behind, but she still somehow stays trapped in those memories (as the camera passes through the snowball glass and Ema stays inside the sphere).

Director’s statement
The focus of the film is the sexual abuse of the girl by her father. 
I decided to deal with this sensitive topic because I believe that we still live in a society in which domestic abuse is largely tolerated as “a family thing”. Furthermore, I decided to talk about the problem of abuse from the perspective of a child as the most vulnerable member of society, and also place the abuser right within the family, to highlight the anxiety caused by the environment which by definition should serve as a safe harbour for its members, but instead they find a threat in it.
The reason I play with present and past in this film is that it gives me an opportunity to represent the power relations between the characters in different periods. In the past, Ema was a powerless child. Now, her father is in that position and she’s the one who has control.
The target audience is adults. The atmosphere is melancholic and anxious. The film is merely focused on the psychological aspect of the protagonist.

Director

Petra Balekić


petra.balekic@gmail.com
Producer

Maša Udovičić


mashaudovicic@gmail.com

Country of production

Croatia

Target audience

Adults and young adults

Animation technique

2D (vector based)

Production company

Luma Film

Estimated budget

EUR 60,000

Funding secured

Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Croatia EUR 50,100 City of Zagreb, Croatia EUR 6,666

Looking for

Sales agents

Close

CEE Animation is supported by the Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union and co-funded by state funds and foundations and professional organisations from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

More info
facebook