The film is set in wartime Pula, the coastal Croatian city that served as a safe haven for thousands of people displaced during the ex-Yugoslav war. The main character, Mahir, is a 28-year-old refugee from Bosnia, with unknown history, living in the Hotel Pula, turned into a refugee centre. While the others try to overcome war traumas by socialising, he is mostly alone, distracted. A spark of life comes when Una, a 16-year-old girl from Pula, is drawn to him.

“Pula is a love story. My balcony in Pula overlooks the ex-military barracks which were populated by people who lost everything they had. Mahir must have also slept in one of those rooms. Just below the Hotel Pula, we, the kids back then, were sunbathing and listening to punk music, while Mahir and people like him were looking for a minimum of dignity in a foreign environment. This is a story about them”, Andrej Korovljev told FNE.

The director's life-long obsession with his hometown Pula is reflected in his previous documentaries Years of Rust (2000) and Tusta (2019), both produced by Factum.

“Both Andrej and I grew up in Pula and we have very vivid memories of the city at that time. Our goal is to draw the project into the direction of the characterisation of the town”, producer Dijana Mlađenović told FNE.

Dijana Mlađenović is producing through Kinematograf. The estimated production budget is 550,000 EUR, with 27,500 EUR already in place through the support of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre for script development, project development, and also the participation in the Re:Act programme. The shooting is set to start in the summer of 2020.

The project will be looking for regional, Austrian or German coproducer or sales agents at CineLink.

Production Information:

Producer:
Kinematograf (Croatia)
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Credits:
Director: Andrej Korovljev
Writer: Ivan Turković-Krnjak