The Optimists 2006
Five scenarios in which people have trouble distinguishing truth from illusions. Each segment reflects the motto of Voltaire's Candide: "Optimism is insisting everything is good, when everything is bad."
Five scenarios in which people have trouble distinguishing truth from illusions. Each segment reflects the motto of Voltaire's Candide: "Optimism is insisting everything is good, when everything is bad."
After a long exile, Rahul returns to his village in the Himalayas. It causes commotion amongst the villagers, who have never forgiven him for his sins in the past.
Our story takes place at the end of the 1960s. This is the time of the collapse of the ideals of a more just and honorable life brought into prominence by students worldwide in the great rebellion in 1968 and of the beginning of the end of an equally grand illusion called Yugoslavia. Andjelko is the principal of a middle school in a small Bosnian place Dubica. He believes in Yugoslavia and worships its leader Josip Broz Tito. Andjelko, however, has one serious fault: he is a forger, he makes forged school diplomas. He does not do this out of self-interest, but because he is a staunch philanthropist. One day, a neighbor for whom Andjelko forged the leather-working school diploma, in order to take revenge on the local veterinarian, reports to the police that this one too has Andjelko's diploma. Our hero is, therefore, forced to flee to the big city. He lives there illegally, at the harborers of outlaws for whom he once forged diplomas. But one day, Andjelko runs into his schoolmate...
A simple story of an ex-convict who comes home after 10 years, only to find two squatters in the form of a woman and her autistic daughter. Though Lazar initially plans to kick out Jasna and Jovana, he changes his mind after seeing the squalid conditions of the shelter they are to move into. It is an allegory of the Balkan wars. When first released in Serbia, it caused some public outrage because of the sharp criticism of Serbia's role in the war.