Sceneggiatura / Screenplay: Ivan Turković Krnjak
Fotografia / Photography: Stanko Herceg
Montaggio / Editing: Ivana Fumić
Musica / Music: Dalibor Grubačević
Suono / Sound: Bojan Kondres
Scenografia / Art Director: Tajana Čanić Stanković
Costumi / Costume Designer: Desanka Janković
Interpreti / Cast: Ermin Bravo, Nika Grbelja, Petra B. Blašković, Nika Ivančić, Maja Izetbegović, Jasmin Telalović, Dado Ćosić, Lav Novosel, Romina Vitasović Lučić, Pavao Novak, Rok Juričić, Luka Juričić
Produzione / Produced by: Kinematograf
Distribuzione internazionale / World Sales: WIDE
The year is 1995. Mahir is a thirty-eight-year-old refugee from Bosnia who has been living in the Croatian city of Pula for several years in a hotel converted into a refugee centre. His days are monotonous and empty, his past is unknown. One warm night at the beginning of summer, Mahir meets Una, a young local girl, on the beach near the hotel. That sudden meeting sparks hope until Mahir’s past catches up with him. After its premiere at the Pula Film Festival, Hotel Pula was presented in many international festivals, including Sarajevo and Tallinn.
“The war refugees who resided in Pula during the 1990s, a city renowned for its multiculturalism, faced anything but a warm welcome during the Yugoslav Wars and ethnic divisions. Those dark times motivated us to narrate a moment in our history that many of us prefer to turn away from. Hotel Pula is a love story in impossible circumstances, a testament to the 1990s and a life that unfolded in a manner that should never be repeated. As teenagers, we swam at the beach beneath the Hotel Pula which was converted to a refugee shelter and danced to punk music in the hotel’s nightclub. Meanwhile, refugees observed us from the hotel’s windows, searching for a glimmer of dignity and hope. Pula, sunny yet vacant, stripped of its tourist postcard image, seemed like a surreal purgatory for both ‘them’ and ‘us.’ ‘We’ were oblivious to their suffering, while ‘they’ were acutely aware.” (A. Korovljev)
Andrej Korovljev
Film director Andrej Korovljev was born in 1970 in Pula, present-day Croatia. He moved to London to study Film and Television at Westminster University. He has directed a number of ads nationally and internationally for many prominent clients. His artistic work includes short films, music videos and documentaries. He is a member of Croatian Guild of Film Directors. The Trieste FF presented in 2020 his documentary Tusta about the Croatian punk rock icon. Hotel Pula is his feature debut.
Selected filmography
1998 Una storia polesana cm / sf doc. 1999 The Years of Rust cm / sf doc.; Premi / Awards: Days of Croatian Film – Miglior documentario / Best Documentary Feature 2019 Tusta doc.; Premi / Awards: Festival of Documentary Rock Film – Miglior film / Best Film 2023 Hotel Pula
