GOD EXISTS, HER NAME IS PETRUNIJA

By Teona STRUGAR MITEVSKA

ENTRE CHIEN ET LOUP (BELGIUM) - as PROD

Drama - Development 2018


    • Year of production
    • 2018
    • Genres
    • Drama
    • Countries
    • NORTH MACEDONIA, BELGIUM, SLOVENIA, FRANCE
    • Duration
    • 100 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Teona STRUGAR MITEVSKA
    • Synopsis
    • Every 19th January during Epiphany, a unique ceremony takes place
      all around Macedonia: the high priest throws a cross into the local
      waters while hundreds of men charge for it. The one who finds it is
      blessed for the whole next year and becomes kind of a local hero.
      Petrunija is single unemployed 31-year-old woman and a historian
      who lives with her parents. Returning home from a failed job interview
      in a sweatshop factory she witnesses the ceremony, decides to jump,
      swims and catches the cross. Immediately, the men attack her and
      wrestle the cross out of her hands since as a woman she has no right
      to participate. A commotion follows and at the moment of heightened
      confusion Petrunija runs away with the cross. Over the next few hours
      her jump into the icy water becomes an Internet sensation. Petrunija
      is taken to a police station, and this is where her ordeal begins: against
      the local men, against the world, against the system. From a room to
      a corridor, to a room again, she spends the night being transferred
      around the impersonal governmental spaces. She insists that she is the
      winner and refuses to return the cross. One by one, the policemen, the
      inspector, the priest unsuccessfully try to convince her to give up.
      Through these 24 hours we discover a society full of stereotypes, with
      collapsed social and justice system.