Regional Competition

We are led through this documentary by the characters who live between the central area of the small settlement of Padinska Skela and the last bus stop. What links them together is the fact that they all have spent their active years as employees of state institutions in Padinska Skela. The film contrasts the work of wage laborers in the fields at the break of dawn, the archive footage depicting important world political figures from the past (Che Guevara, Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein) visiting large agricultural estates, the fate of retired farmers, the organization of life and conditions in the jailhouse... The director has achieved it by employing retrospective devices, testimonials about encounters of elementary-school pupils and patients from the mental hospital, scenes from the representative state-owned hunting-ground where President Tito was a frequent guest, and other somewhat bizarre episodes offering a glimpse of the nightlife in the last remaining socialist-realist town, when the last bus is leaving and when a long, dark night begins. Authentic and introspective narration of the protagonists explains the purpose and the history of the settlement and the earlier mentioned institutions and how they refl ect on the lives of the remaining inhabitants (on both sides of law and sanity) and the landless wage-laborers whose lives are merged with the stateowned land now they have abandoned their own.