One of Canada’s most skilled young filmmakers, Igor Drljaca returns to Canada’s Top Ten for a second consecutive year. (His brilliant short The Archivists was part of the 2020 Top Ten.) The White Fortress finds the Bosnian Canadian director returning to the country of his birth, a subject previously explored in his features Krivina, The Waiting Room, and The Stone Speakers.
Faruk (Pavle Čemerikić) is an orphaned teen living with his grandmother in contemporary Sarajevo. During the day he works hauling scrap for his uncle, who only hangs around to ingratiate himself with Faruk’s grandmother (he wants her apartment). At night Faruk does odd jobs for local gangsters, though he’s so low in the pecking order that he isn’t even fully aware they’re up to anything criminal — at first.
As the film proceeds, the scope of corruption in the city is expanded via Mona (Sumeja Dardagan), a girl Faruk connects with. Her father is a prominent, deeply corrupt politician who may be more dangerous than the gangsters Faruk works for. Drljaca juxtaposes this exposé of political rot with the poignancy of first love, directing the film with extraordinary nuance and restraint that, perhaps paradoxically, imbues the film with intense emotional power.
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