Petria’s Wreath
DUTCH PREMIERE (restored version)
A portrait of an illiterate village woman whose life is shaped by love, loss and the three men she married.
Set in a small mining town in Serbia before, during and after the Second World War, Petria’s Wreath follows Petria, a peasant woman whose life is marked by one tragedy after another. Through her relationships with three men, she experiences marriage, betrayal, loneliness and hope, while the loss of her children and her inability to have more deepen her suffering. Yet Petria endures, retaining an extraordinary capacity for love and resilience. Based on the eponymous novel by Dragoslav Mihailović, the film is both an intimate portrait of a woman confronting the limits imposed on her and a chronicle of life in the Serbian interior during a turbulent period in history.
SCREENINGS
Saturday 14 November 14:30
Saturday 21 November 19:00
Programme section(s): Old Gold: 100 Years of Pavle Vuisić (1926-1988)
Original title: Petrijin venac | Year: 1980 | Runtime: 99′
Country: Yugoslavia | Language: Serbo-Croatian | Subtitles: English
Cast: Mirjana Karanović, Marko Nikolić, Pavle Vuisić, Dragan Maksimović
Director: Srđan Karanović | Production: Milan Žmukić – Centar Film | Screenplay: Srđan Karanović, Rajko Grlić (based on novel by Dragoslav Mihailović) | Cinematography: Tomislav Pinter | Editing: Branka Čeperac
FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
Festival of Yugoslav Feature Film in Pula, 1980 – Golden Arenas for Best Film and Best Leading Actress (Mirjana Karanović) | Venice International Film Festival, 1980 | Amsterdam World International Film Festival, 1980 | Montpellier International Festival of Mediterranean Film, 1980 | La Rochelle International Film Festival, 1980
DIRECTOR’S BIO
Srđan Karanović (Belgrade, 1945) is a Serbian film director and screenwriter. He began his career directing short films and television. Karanović is a prominent member of the “Prague School” of Yugoslav filmmakers, a generation of directors who studied at the prestigious FAMU film academy in Prague, where he graduated in 1970. He has directed 17 films and is best known for The Scent of Wild Flowers (1977), which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival; Petria’s Wreath (1980), and Something in Between (1983), as well as the television series A Throatful of Strawberries (1985).
