TAKVA SU PRAVILA

Seventeen-year-old Tomica lives together with his parents Ivo and Maja in a Zagreb suburb surrounded by communist-era apartment blocks on the edge of a motorway. Bus driver Ivo is conscientious and dutiful. Tomica returns home late one night covered in blood, with bruises from head to toe. He plays down his injuries, and it's only when he collapses in the bathroom that he can be convinced to go to hospital. There doctors discover a tumour between his brain and cranial bone, a subdural hematoma, and Tomica is placed in an artificial coma. Throughout his parents remain patient, calm and composed, even when a friend shows them a video, shot on a mobile phone, where Tomica can be seen being brutally attacked by a fellow pupil. When they attempt to file charges the police refuse to accept the video as evidence, instead palming them off with endless paperwork. It's then that Tomica's condition dramatically worsens.

Croatian director Ognjen Sviličić's fifth feature film is a disimpassioned, subtle narrative on how a sudden confrontation with brutal violence gives two peaceful, law-abiding parents a reality check on the society they live in, its brutalisation, slow-moving bureaucracy and inefficient health-care system. For his role as father Emir Hadžihafizbegović was conferred with the award for Best Actor at this year's Venice International Film Festival Orizzonti programme section.