Just Between Us

Neka ostane medju nama (2010)

Director: Rajko Grlić
Scriptwriters: Ante Tomić and Rajko Grlić
Camera: Slobodan Trninić
Editor: Andrija Zafranović
Production Designer: Ivica Hušnjak
Costume: Blanka Budak
Make-Up: Mojca Gregoranc
Cast: Miki Manojlović, Bojan Navojec, Ksenija Marinković, Daria Lorenci, Nataša Dorčić
Producer: Igor Nola
Produced by: Mainframe Production, Zagreb; NP7, Zagreb; Yodi, Beograd; Studio Maj, Ljubljana; the Council of Europe’s co-production support fund; Eurimages
World sales: Wild Management, Paris
Official website: www.justbetweenusmovie.com

Just Between Us is a wicked, indiscreet contemporary story set in Zagreb about the whirling erotic passions that percolate beneath the dull, composed surface of everyday bourgeois life and manners. It is about things that happen in well-established families that are mainly kept secret, but that nevertheless remain painful. We meet two brothers, their wives and lovers - and their children who do not know who their real fathers are. Double lives and parallel relationships are blended into a bitterweet story about the relentless quest for love and happiness, about passion that never ceases, and the terrible consequences that arise, even by chance, when one ends up in a bed that is not one’s own.

Just Between Us premiered internationally in competition at the 45th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Czech Republic.
 

Awards

45th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Czech Republic
www.kviff.com

• "Crystal Globe" - best director award
• "European Screens Label" - award for the best European film

57th Pula Film Festival, Croatia
www.pulafilmfestival.hr

• "The Grand Golden Arena" for the best film
• "The Golden Arena" for the best director
• "The Golden Arena" for the best actress in a supporting role
• "The Golden Arena" for the best cinematography
• "The Golden Arena" for the best sound
• "The Golden Arena" for the best score
• "The Golden Arena" for the best art direction
• "FEDEORA award" - Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean

24. Herceg Novi Festival, Monte Negro

• "The Golden Mimosas" for the best director

45th Nis Film Festival of Acting Achievements, Serbia

• "Czar Konstantin" for the best actor in the leading role
• "Audience award" for the best actor
• "Critics award" for the best actor

GSIFF New York 2010 International Film Festival, USA
www.gsiff.com

• Best Feature
• Best Actor (Miki Manojlović)

27. Festival International du Film d’Amour de Mons, Belgium

• "Prix Cinéfemme"

City of Zagreb Award 2011. , Zagreb, Croatia

• To Rajko Grlic for "Just Between Us"

 
27. Festroia International Film Festival, Setubal, Portugal

• "Silver Dolphin" 

14. Raindance Film Festival, London, UK

• "Best International Feature"

Director’s Statement

In contemporary sociological writings one can find many explanations about conjugal infidelity or love affairs: however we may call it, these are often the only kinds of rebellion against the predictability of life. Our life is quite determined by our employers, family, church, state, media and money. It seems like the only thing left to change is the person with whom we share our bed. Today, adulterers replace the outlaws of yesterday--the revolutionaries, rebels, and visionaries. According to sociologists, the excitement of rebellion, the sweetness of breaking the rules, and the danger of crossing into the unknown, is reduced to an adventure called adultery.
On the other hand, psychiatrists have being assuring us for decades that deep at the root of everybody’s need to escape the annoyances of everyday life lies a powerful, hardly understandable and barely predictable "sexual instinct," - our archetypical drive for "creation" or "rebellion."
I have heard, as we all have, more or less, countless stories about affairs, adulteries and incredible double lives. I have always explicitly admired, I have to admit, the fascinating energy and the amount of fantasy some people have invested into these double lives, which often become the rebellious and creative peaks of their lives.
Put together, these three premises have led to my personal reason for making this film. I am of the age when it is good to go back to where I started to tell film stories in the first place: on Zagreb streets, in beds and apartments.

Photo gallery