When a person enters some, let’s call it, middle age, he realizes that children’s birthday parties are a completely new form of entertainment. While the children are playing, the parents are drinking, and one child’s birthday will bring the family and society together in a drama that takes place somewhere in the suburbs of Belgrade in 1993. “Celts” is Milica Tomović’s debut film, with which she presented herself in the Panorama section of the Berlin festival, and this high-quality drama was subsequently shown at numerous international festivals, winning the award for directing in Sarajevo. The war period in which the film takes place was not chosen by chance, and the socio-political changes and events that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia are only occasionally the topic of conversation or we hear something peripheral as it comes from the television.
However, it is clear that this gloomy time must also affect the lives of the characters, and from the beginning one can feel anxiety, restlessness and some hopelessness and pessimism. That something is wrong in the marriage of Marijana (Dubravka Kovjanić) and her husband (Stefan Trifunović) is hinted at in the opening scene, because while he is taking a shower, she masturbates in bed, and even when he realizes what is happening, he does not jump on one morning, he is already tiptoeing to his room so as not to interrupt his wife in her work. Then we see that the children’s birthday party of their eight-year-old daughter Minja is coming up that same evening, who probably like all the kids of that time adores Ninja Turtles. But, apart from her little friends, mom’s and dad’s friends and relatives will also arrive at the party, and that part of the fun, while the children are playing harmlessly, is much more interesting.
The relationships between these adult characters are extremely interesting, and with the crazy talk about politics and sex with alcohol and some drugs, it becomes clear to us that all these characters have some past and background. Marijana’s (Nikola Rakočević) brother arrived in the company of his partner (Slaven Došlo), while her two best friends Zaga (Nada Šargin) and Ceca (Jelena Đokić) recently broke up and Zaga took a new, younger girl (Jovana Gavrilović) with her. just to make her ex jealous. There is also the younger brother of Marijana’s husband, who is now a punk and an anarchist and the main role model for her older niece who listens to Satan of Pannonia and the KUD idiots, and one can guess that not so long ago he was almost a fierce right-winger.
But while the situation at the children’s birthday is heating up on both floors – children’s and adult’s, Marijana seems to have had enough of everything and it seems to her that she is living in a continuous deja-vu. It’s as if she’s experienced the same thing a hundred times, participated in the same conversations a thousand times, and when she suddenly leaves, it will take some time for the rest of society to realize she’s gone. “Celts” was an interesting film, a quality social study with interesting characters and the relationships between them, in which we see that much has not changed in these thirty years. There may be no more war, but the environment is still gloomy, hopeless, hopeless, and at children’s birthday parties people still talk about politics and sex with a sea of alcohol.