Croatia has selected Hana Jusic’s quirky family drama Quit Staring at My Plate as its candidate for best foreign-language film in the Oscars.
The film, featuring newcomer Mia Petricevic as Marijana, a young woman driven crazy by the too-close confines of family life in a tiny, cramped apartment, is writer-director Jusic’s first solo feature, though she participated in the ensemble-directed Transmania last year.
The film, which premiered in the Venice Days section at the Venice Film Festival last year, follows Marijana’s despair after her controlling father suffers a stroke and she becomes the family’s main breadwinner. Driven to the verge of a nervous breakdown, Marijana finds solace in seedy sex with random strangers, giving her a taste for freedom and a different kind of life.
Although The Hollywood Reporter‘s critic Boyd van Hoeij observes that the film suffers from some typical first-film faults, he explains that its “sense of bleak realism, which always includes the possibility of hope and redemption just beyond the frame” suggests “it’ll be interesting to see what [Jusic] does next.”
The film was produced by Ankica Juric Tilic, and international sales are being handled by New Europe Film Sales.
Croatia has submitted a film to the Oscars every year since becoming an independent state in 1992, but a film from the country has never yet been nominated.
