In Belgrade, an apartment is divided in two by a door, which has been permanently locked for over 70 years. The apartment, which was divided on the order of Yugoslavia’s then communist government, is where director Mila Turajlic’s mother was born, and where Mila grew up herself.
Throughout civil war, the breakup of Yugoslavia, aerial bombardments and revolution, the door has never been opened. Mila’s mother, Srbijanka Turajlic, who was a prominent political activist and leading player in the revolution, still lives in just one half of the apartment. Moving back and forth between the personal and the political, this richly textured film is at once a poem to the filmmaker’s mother, a renowned activist and professor, and a portrait of life in Belgrade following the turbulent break up of the former Yugoslavia.
