This event has been organized by the Harvard College South Slavic Society with the support of Harvard Film Archive, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

The leading filmmaker in Croatian cinema for decades, Rajko Grlic examines the state of Croatian society in his latest film, The Constitution. The film’s allegorical narrative grows out of the intersections of the lives of four neighbors in a Zagreb apartment building. After aging teacher Vjeko is beaten for being gay, he is cared for by the nurse living next door, Maja, who also helps Vjeko care for his aged father, who was a high-ranking official in the Ustasha, the fascist nationalist movement that ruled Croatia during World War II.  As thanks for her help, Vjeko reads Croatia’s constitution to Maja’s Serbian husband, a dyslexic police officer studying for a civil service exam. Grlic has likened the film to a mosaic, one in which the intricacies of the delicate arrangements among this quartet add up to a comment on present-day Croatia, which has seen a resurgence of right-wing intolerance, like so much of the rest of Europe and the United States. – David Pendleton