La Strada

Over a thousand metres long and with two hundred houses along it, the main street of the Istrian town of Vodnjan has been a showroom of crafts and different trades for centuries. At the same time, this northern Croatian coastal place has also been the meeting point of various languages, traditions and cultures. Following one day in the life of this street, with all the different ways people communicate, walk and talk, and showing colourful city carnivals and processions, the director depicts the atmosphere of this famous strada. He peeks from behind the city walls and portrays the people brought in by the waves of history. The brilliant photography by one of the best Croatian cameramen of the younger generation – Boris Poljak – supported by an imaginative soundtrack, captures the spirit of the Mediterranean town inhabited by Italian gentry, native Croats and newly arrived refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo. The dominant tenor of the film is melancholy. The film has no words but speaks eloquently through the powerful synergy of lyrical images and multi-layered sounds. The young Croatian director Damir Cucic has been successfully exploring this aesthetical approach in many of his earlier documentaries.