15th FilmFestival Cottbus
Festival of East European Cinema (November 8-12, 2005)

Award of thew Ecumenical Jury:

Gravehopping (Odgrobadagroba)
by Jan Cvitkovic, Slovenia/Croatia 2005

In the end, Pero falls into silence. Being a funeral orator, he earns his money through death – which becomes an experience one cannot speak about any longer in the course of the film. Humorous and with long, expressive shots director Jan Cvitkovic unfolds a network of connections all of which revolve around love and death. A Slovenian village turns out to be a microcosm under southern sun combining the funny and the cryptic elements of transitoriness. Different models are presented to explain the enigma of death, catching a glimpse of potential redemption.

Synopsis: As a funeral orator who pays the final tribute to those who have passed away, Pero is obliged to devote an unusual amount of time to the question of what life is all about. And of what it means when the end comes. He even grows a little wiser every time he puts these philosophical ruminations into words and looks down into an open grave soon to be filled with earth. But he’s just an average guy, really. He lives with his father Dedo and his sisters Ida and Vilma in a small town not far from the Adriatic Sea. It’s a place where the sky is almost permanently blue and seems to stretch into infinity. But life is less serene down on the ground. Vilma sees her husband only when he wants sex, Ida is a deaf-mute, and the widower Dodo is prone to increasingly bizarre suicide attempts. But they’ve all learnt to take things as they come. And so Pero’s best friend Suki happily drives Dedo to his psychiatrist, or Pero to the next funeral, and in-between times he tinkers with his beloved “Zastava”, the car with which he would like to be buried ... It’s a small world. And it turns out to be one teetering on the brink of the abyss. The viewer is not spared a glimpse into its darkest depths. Yet the ending is sentimental in the best sense of the world. People, after all, are known to be endowed not only with reason but also with emotions. And they don’t mind occasionally being reminded of that fact. (Festival information)

Members of the jury. Florian Kroeppel (Austria), Angelika Obert (President, Germany), Géza Tislér (Hungary), Katharina Zeckau (Germany)