The Region of Deck Passengers

Ivan Salatić’s debut feature You Have the Night (Ti imaš noć, 2018) presents the story of Sanja, a young woman who returns to her hometown on the Montenegrin coast, at the same time giving a broader insight into the lives of the people, towns and regions that have remained caught in the post-socialist transition. The main (collective) character turns out to be the city itself, a place that the decline of industry turned into a non-place, robbing the citizens of all agency or life ambition and making it
virtually impossible for new relations or identities to be formed. Relying on his slow, quiet and dark filmmaking style and his affinity for elliptic storytelling (emulating Bresson and Haneke, among others), Salatić creates an unpleasant atmosphere and a tangible suspense even though the movie is set in an environment where nothing much is supposed to happen anymore.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!