Lidija Stevanović

Five scenarios in which people have trouble distinguishing truth from illusions. Each segment reflects the motto of Voltaire's Candide: "Optimism is insisting everything is good, when everything is bad."

The story of the film is set in the period from the 1940s until today in the Pannonian plain (the plain in the Central Europe), in an area of elusive boundaries, mysterious and unstable spiritual identity. The witness of the time is a Jewish boy Benya Cohn who, with his eye wide open, remembers the tragedy of his family, in the shadow of the Holocaust, concentration camps and new wars.

A transvestite couple from 1990s Belgrade beholds their profession as a pacifistic mission, curbing the urges of rapists, gamblers and horny young men during turbulent periods in war-torn country.

Young seamstress Ivana leaves work in the tailor shops in Novi Pazar and accepts an offer to be a waitress in a private cafe in Gusinje, Montenegrin town on the Yugoslav-Albanian border. She meets a waitress with whom she becomes fast friends. Brothers Skeljzen and Becir come to Gusinje from New York for the holidays and meet with the waitresses, starting a love affair. Young men promise the girls marriage and going to America.

The abolishment of a railway station in a remote Bosnian village affects the lives of the local railwaymen.

Liza is a young Dutch woman who travels to Venice to meet her Italian father Mauro. Mauro has not seen Liza since she was three years old, when he and Liza’s mother decided to split up. Mauro has traveled the world since as a musician. When Liza is in Venice it turns out there is more in store than just a couple of days in Venice. He takes Liza on a musical voyage along the route of the Orient Express. A trip that will eventually take them to Istanbul.

After years spent in Belgrade, Janko returns to his half-deserted village, the home of his widowed mother Milica. The latter sincerely hopes that Janko has come back for good; her son, however, has other plans.

The film consists of five stories that are interconnected with mysterious characters and events. The main character is trying to discover the meaning of each. He gets sucked in the events that will lead him to the strange places where he meets strange people, fairytale creatures and landscapes.

A moulder wants to live a happy life, but the circumstances in his factory are such that everyone is looking for an opportunity to grab the money before the ship sinks down to the bottom.

Zilnik's 102 minutes long TV series is about a couple of guys, one good and naive, the other liar and manipulator, trying to make a living the best they can...Along the way they meet a guy who eats glass, metal and plates, then a couple of strippers, and a lot of ordinary people. Zilnik's dry realistic approach is filled with humour and documentary parts with some real peasants and working-class people.