Hey Babu Riba

In 1985 four middle aged Yugoslav emigres return to Belgrade for the funeral of Mariana, their compatriot. They used to call her Esther; she was the coxswain of their four man rowing crew and all of them loved her. They had last seen her in 1953, when they rowed her across the Adriatic, pregnant, to reach her exiled father in Italy. Through flashbacks we learn the story of their youth: cigarettes, music, Hollywood and Swedish films, blue jeans on the black market, and their enmity with Ristic, the Communist youth leader. The film does not recall those years with longing; it asks who lost what. The account does not turn what happened to the young woman into a spectacle. Gala Videnovic plays the lead in Jovan Acin’s hundred and twelve minute Yugoslav film, completed in 1985.