Paper short abstract:

The paper offers an analysis of different ethnic minorities in the Croatian fiction film after 1990. Since 1990 marks a break in the Croatian history, filmic representation of minorities plays a crucial role in the way new society transforms itself and deals with conflictual national heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The focus of the paper is an analysis of cultural stereotypes and different ethnic and sexual minorities in the Croatian fiction film after 1990. Since 1990 marks a crucial break in the history of Croatian cultural identity and ethnicities of former Yugoslavia, representation of minorities in the context of war and postwar setting plays a distinguished role in the way contemporary, new society transforms itself and deals with conflictual national heritage. Through filmic representation the new society also tries to articulate its own identity by negotiating diversified minority identities which it conceives primarily as a threat and something that cannot be incorporated in the new social order. But also, through exploring themes that were silenced before the year 2000, contemporary films give minorities a new voice and a strong visual path to recognition even beyond the stereotyped version of its previous portrayal.

In the period from 1990 various Croatian films deal with primarily ethnic/national minorities. Two trends are visible in that regard: ethnic minority (like the Serbian) in the war context that struggles for recognition (for example in the film Witnesses, 2003, by Vinko Brešan) or ethnic minorities of different kinds in the postwar context (for example an Asian child in the film Sorry for Kunf Fu, 2004, by Ognjen Sviličić). Of course, these two aspects often intertwine, like in the film Fine Dead Girls (2002) by Dalibor Matanić, where the lesbian couple is fighting for recognition in the context of postwar Zagreb saturated by intolerance and war traumas.