point of contact

DOSSIER 2006
The official online publication of the
Syracuse International Film Festival, Vol.3
A Point of Contact Production

Here We Are (My Zdes) Slovak Republic
Jaroslav Vojt, Director
(76 minutes)

Film Review by Edward Zajec

Dimitrij Kranac has just made the momentous decision to move his family to Slovakia. For the last forty years he has been living in Balgarka, a village in the Kazakhstan steppe, but he has never really felt at home there. His hearth belongs elsewhere, to a dreamland he has never seen, but exists vividly impressed in his imagination through the stories his parents have told him about it. In the aftermath of World War II, his parents moved first to Sub-Carpathian Ukraine, and after that region was annexed by the Soviet Union, they became subject to a decree which forced them to resettle in Kazakhstan. A coercion is like a loaded spring waiting for the first occasion to bounce back, no matter how long that may take. For the Kranac family that occasion came with the fall of the Soviet Union. Once in Slovakia though, it doesn't take Dimitrij very long to realize that the dreamland he carried in his hearth had never really existed, or if it did, it certainly was no longer there. It is impossible to return to Balgarka now, because they have sold everything. The director Jaro Vojtek, very subtly unfolds the story, being careful to document the experiences of each individual member of the Kranac family, but it is Dimitrij who eventually emerges as having the prominent role. He is the one that has the hardest time adapting to the new situation, who feels lonely and alienated, and whose thoughts are constantly in the past with all that he has left behind. He is bound to go back, even if only for a visit, and when he finally does go back, the circle closes, joining this documentary of a family saga with humanity's destiny of no return.