EL SHATT – BLUEPRINT FOR UTOPIA

Hundreds of frozen and starved people floating on boats in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea fleeing from the war… Familiar scenes that we are used to seeing in recent times. But the year is 1944, and the refugees are travelling from Europe to Africa. After Italian capitulation, and before the arrival of German army, 28,000 Dalmatian Croats left their home villages and towns to live for two years under the tents in the middle of Egyptian desert, in a kind of a communist model village that was formed to show the Allies how the new Yugoslavia will look like when the war ends. This is a story about them.
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Directed by: Ivan Ramljak
Written by: Ivan Ramljak
Cinematography: Boris Poljak
Editing: Jelena Maksimović
Sound: Vladimir Živković
Producer: Tibor Keser
Production: Kompot
Co-producers: Iva Plemić-Divjak, Mladen Kovačević, Sunčica Fradelić
Co-production: Horopter Film Production (Serbia), Kino klub Split (Croatia)
Festivals and Awards: DOK Leipzig, Festival of mediterranean film Split 2023. ― Audience award, Special mention; Liburnia Film Festival – Audience Award, Best Editing, Best Cinematographer

About the author:

Ivan Ramljak (1974) film director and independent film curator. He established Human Rights Film Festival in Zagreb in 2003. From 2013. to 2022. He was curating Short Tuesday ― short film programme at cinema Tuskanac. He has been artistic director of Tabor Film festival, oldest festival for shorts in Croatia,  since 2016. Since 2022. He is programming for International film festival Rotterdam (IFFR). His films have been screened at more than 80 international film festivals around the world (Cinéma du réel, DOK Leipzig, Sarajevo Film festival,, Dokufest, GoEast…), where he won numerous awards.