Title: Pelican

Genre: Psychological drama

Screening starts: 19 November 2022

Length: 87 minutes

Director: Filip Heraković

Screenwriters: Filip Heraković, Nikolina Bogdanović

Actors: Edi Ćelić, Marko Petrić, Lucija Barišić, Ivan Glowatzky, Tena Nemet Brankov, Stojan Matavulj, Tanja Smoje

Pelican is the 2022 debut film by director Filip Heraković. The main role is played by Edi Ćelić and the film premiered at the Black Nights Festival in Tallinn where it won a special jury award for best director. A professional athlete's inability to look at life from a different angle after an injury that could end his career is one of the old staple stories in cinema. Films about the depression main characters go through when placed in isolated spaces in rehab is an old narrative, from the Hollywood greats to smaller European films. But what makes this film unique?

The main character's inner struggle to create a new identity in a place where people mostly die is quite absurd – the main character tries to build a new self in a place full of old people who hardly ever leave it alive. Pelican follows Josip, a football goalkeeper staying at a rehabilitation centre due to an injury he sustained while skiing. Faced with the fact that his professional career may be over, in a desperate attempt to discover some new self Josip attends a seminar for vacuum cleaner promoters using a fake accreditation taken from a participant who did not show up. The film is characterized by slow plot development and long moments of observation and contemplation by the main character without any speech, but with a multitude of background sounds. Some of these moments are those when the audience hears what Josip is listening on his headphones while sunbathing by the pool or walking -  a meditative speech by a relaxing voice that aims to completely relax the man. The sounds heard while the main character is diving in the pool, i.e. water noise, serve the same objective. In addition to the main narrative, the director inserts segments of the skiing accident into the structure, which also have their own development. We can conclude that this is a state of consciousness film with weak narrative development, representing the struggle of one man with an identity crisis. 

While in rehab, Josip decides to discard everything that connects him to the past. As he changes in the pool changing room, an elderly gentleman recognises him but Josip lets him know that he mistook him for someone else. His girlfriend, who comes to visit him, he deliberately pushes away, letting her know that he's leaving her. When visiting a friend who is also a teammate, his behavior clearly shows that he is no longer the same person, the Condor, as was his field nickname. From a phone conversation with his manager Josip learns that the insurance company most likely won't cover the cost of his skiing injury, as the rescuers allegedly found him far from the marked ski slope. At that moment the question arises, for the first time, whether Josip experienced some form of identity crisis even before his injury, and whether he had decided to commit suicide?

Through this journey in search of identity, Josip tries to find satisfaction in the little things. So for him a can of Coca-Cola is total instant pleasure, such that he would be willing to exit the hotel and go far to buy it, and one of the few moments of pleasure is when the maid offers it to him. He finds a glimmer of pleasure in an intimate relationship with a girl who is also staying at the rehabilitation center. The final feeling arises by the pool at the moment when Josip, sitting at the edge of the pool, drops his hand in the water and experiences a moment of total satisfaction, of total control over himself. By removing his hand from the water he returns to reality, but the background voice of the pelican lets us conclude that Josip has found total satisfaction in the given situation. All the pleasures had by people from his previous life, the expensive car, Sony PlayStation with a smart TV that a friend brings to his room, a good picture for social networks, Josip observes with complete indifference. Josip is a character who lives his daily life completely empty on the inside. One of the scenes that perhaps best depicts this is when the maid enters his room, certain that he is not inside. After a moment, she notices him lying on the bed covered with a quilt from head to toe. Stunned by the scene, she explains that she thought he had died in bed because the rehabilitation center is a place where people often die – they die physically, while Josip died spiritually. The theme of fish eating dead skin can also be linked to identity death. When he put his hand into the aquarium full of fish hungry for dead human skin, Josip felt the life around him for the first time in the film. The process of his disappearance ends with a scene in which Josip floats in a pool full of fish, indicating that he is ready to completely give up his old self. 

By stealing the identity of one of the participants in the vacuum cleaner promoters’ seminar, Josip, now pretending to be Branimir, tries to discover his new self. Diving into the role of a new person, he introduces himself to his colleagues and presents them with a whole new person during the introduction exercises. He builds himself up in a whole new way, including by skipping the therapeutic exercises crucial for his recovery. However, after a very short time, unable to find his own, Josip in the role of Branimir steals the identity of yet another seminar participant. This time in conversation with the hotel receptionist, he presents his life as a life of a hunter who finds life's pleasures in game hunting. At some point in the film we learn that Josip's nickname in the football world was Condor, a vulture bird with a massive wingspan, such as the one he had in front of the goal. In conversation with his friend, Josip tells him that the pelican is also a bird with a large wingspan. The film ends with a dream scene where Josip, waking up in a new hotel room, becomes a Pelican himself. And the pelican is a bird that, despite its size, is fast even on land, is a fast swimmer and the biggest flying bird, representing perhaps the main character's hidden desire of what he wants to be.