The House in Kraljevec

Synopsis

In a period deemed today as particularly innovative and fruitful for Croatian culture, there were several important gathering places of the 70's and 80's generation in Zagreb, but one has escaped the public eye - the House in Kraljevec 35. It was built by stage director Slobodan Praljak, and over the course of 15 years it was inhabited and frequented by a large number of peers who, regardless of their mutual differences, shared the costs and built a common world view - Abdulah Sidran, Goran Babić, Mirko Ilić, Igor Kordej, Milan Trenc, the Ayllu group, Goran Pavelić Pipo, Davor Slamnig, Pjer Žardin, Zdenko Jelčić, Vili Matula, Dragan Despot, Davor Gobac etc. Many of them later scattered across the entire world: from South America to Canada, from New York to The Hague, Belgrade, Sarajevo and Ljubljana. As the last in the series of tenants, Pero Kvesić, in conversation with some of these people, tried to grasp why this place had always attracted so many diverse and outstanding creative talents.
Due to the director's illness, the film was finalized by co-screenwriter and editor Vesna Biljan Pušić, and producer Nenad Puhovski.
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Director Biography

Pero Kvesić was born in 1950 in Zagreb, where he obtained a degree in Sociology and Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He founded the youth magazine Polet in 1977, serving as its first editor in chief. He held the same position at the magazine Pitanja, and in 1984 he founded the magazine Quorum. He has published numerous prose works and a number of poetry collections, as well as several picture books and children’s novels. In 2007 and 2009, his works were included in required school reading in Denmark. While under the mentoring of Dušan Vukotić, in 1987 he came up with the idea for the series, the script and the characters for the animated film serial Mali leteći medvjedi for Zagreb film. At the beginning of the seventies, he wrote scripts for Školska televizija Zagreb. He has written screenplays for several TV dramas, documentary films and series, as well as short animated films. He has collaborated on the screenplay for Rajko Grlić’s film Samo jednom se ljubi. Dum spiro spero, Pero Kvesić's debut film produced in 2016, won the Grand Prix at the Croatian Film Days, Vedran Šamanović Award at Pula Film Festival, Best Mid-Length Documentary Award at Festival dei popoli, and Golden Horn Award at the Krakow Film Festival.