A story about different worlds and a women's manifesto: Danish, and ours - the film "Home" by Marijana Janković

At a time when Western film production is seeing more and more films that not only deal with the lives of different ethnic groups that have immigrated to the West for one reason or another, but there are also more and more such films that are written by creators who themselves come from those backgrounds.

In Denmark itself, where the tradition of Nordic cultural isolation had long endured and only sporadically opened up to cultural influences from outside, a radical opening of this kind was out of the question. Thus, only here and there literary works and modest film productions by authors with a different ethnic background than the native Danes appeared. Only recently have authors such as Omara Shargawia i Salima's name, whose films are shown in all the leading cinemas in this country.

As for us who came to Denmark as immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, although we are quite numerous, we have not been able to boast any significant participation in the production of Danish cinematography so far. Apart from a few student films made in the final years of our studies, there have been no major or artistically significant achievements.

It is true that, at the level of acting, he achieved a beautiful, and one could even say enviable, success. What he did Dejan Cukic, an actor who has fully realized himself through more than numerous film roles throughout Scandinavia, and Slavko Labovic, with equally numerous roles, and then, for a time very popular Zlatko Burić, the actresses came Marijana Janković i Danica ĆurčićThe latter two have successfully spent their entire acting careers in Danish theaters, and especially through numerous and prestigious roles on the small and big screen.

And now, using the wave of general, although still cautious opening towards authors with ethnic backgrounds, Marijana Janković has dared to make a film in which she is not only one of the main protagonists of the film, but also the parade leader, that is to say, no less than the film's director himself. Based on her own film script and gathering an acting crew that primarily speaks our language, along with Danish actors who aimed to give authenticity to everything, Janković has managed to tell a story with which not only our, mostly Montenegrin population, since it is mainly about them in the film, can identify, but also that other ethnic groups of immigrants can see themselves through it. If nothing else, then to push forward the processes that will give birth to authors from their own ranks, who will bring their collective migrant trauma to the light of day. The author of these lines was sitting in the cinema in the immediate vicinity of two girls with a Polish background who, in a spontaneous conversation after the film, expressed such expectations, themselves moved by the power of the film they had just watched. With the power of the film's story, which strongly drew them into its emotional vortex.

Film language

Fully respecting the requirements of Scandinavian film, which has always chosen a lighter, almost novelistic, one could say, slow and sluggish pace, Marijana Janković managed to bring the story of her debut film to the end with a very appealing film language. We also think that she managed to justify the choice of the film's title itself, to problematize in totality the question of 'what is home', whether a home is a living being, or a static creation tied to a building, a house, and how to reset that same home in new, rather unfamiliar conditions. What this thing called home gives to its members has been posed more than transparently on many occasions. The question of the role of the members of that community is especially topical, especially since they have to move from modest Montenegrin conditions to a state community such as Denmark, which, thanks to its economic superiority, will help the family survive.

Not because the other actors, Zlatko Burić, or Nada Shargin for example, they did not live up to their roles, on the contrary, they coped excellently with their roles, the first in the role of uncle, the second in the role of mother Vera, Dejan Cukić as pater familias bore the brunt. Cukić absolutely managed to express this, almost unbelievably difficult role that patriarchal society has imposed on men, demanding from him to have a solution in all, absolutely all situations. The father in the role of Dejan Cukić also managed to show how unnecessary it is in the new conditions, how much the fusion with the patriarchal cliché is sometimes counterproductive, and if we are to be honest, this role of a man understood in this way has already become quixotic. For example, his theatrical refusal to let his little daughter Maja, whom he plays masterfully Tara Cubrilo selling mugs she painted herself on the street and thus contributing to improving the family economy, or refusing to reorganize and rebuild relationships with her sons on a slightly more casual basis, shows how the inflexibility and non-adaptability of this model of community, such as the patriarchal family model, is actually to blame for some of the misfortunes of its members, which perhaps could not have been avoided, but could certainly have been reduced.

The historical context of the film is traced through football, the well-known story of the success of Yugoslav football in the 1991 European Championship qualifiers, whose Danes became winners by disqualifying that same Yugoslavia, which had to withdraw precisely because of it, that war.

It is particularly effective, not by showing the already shabby clips of the final match of that championship, but by showing numerous Danish flags on the balconies of neighboring buildings, towards which the father's (Dejan Cukić's) gaze is directed at that moment, showing something we have known and seen so many times in fresh film language.

There are many extraordinary cinematic details in this film, and especially many dilemmas that the film pointed out and left open to simply gape, thus giving each of us the chance to further question and seek answers.

One of the most important is the dilemma that stands at the very end of the film. It is the one that raises the crucial question: “Did this odyssey, this displacement of the family from its natural environment, have any meaning at all and what did it bring to it, to that family?” This is the final scene that takes place in a village cemetery in Montenegro, where the circle practically closes, because that is where it all began, where the decision was made to embark on a journey into the unknown. At that cemetery, Maja, as an adult played by Marijana Janković herself, and her brother Miloš meet. The other brother Ivan stayed in Denmark and is in one of the Danish prisons. Miloš is portrayed as a decent, young and family man who, unlike his brother Ivan, responsibly takes on his role as the father of the family, as, after all, what his father did for him. He welcomes and stages his sister’s welcome, asking his little daughter to give her flowers and to ceremonially hand them over to her. She gives it as recognition for everything she has done as the leader of the family in the new conditions. That a woman can be the pater familias, that it does not have to be a man as we are used to, is perhaps the strongest message of this film. A film that is full of these and similar messages, although our women have been repeating to their children for generations: “Do as your father tells you”. They were, one might say, true vestals of patriarchal social values, just as mother Vera did before her trip to Denmark. Marijana Janković's film is therefore also a kind of women's manifesto, a cry for responsibility to be shared between the sexes. Shared for the benefit of all family actors, but not only them but also for the benefit of the entire society, which will get a new chance to breathe, and perhaps even to experience a real renaissance.