SYNOPSIS

One morning, Marija (80) is surprised by a doorbell. When she opens the door, she finds her son — missing in the war for thirty years — standing before her, unchanged, still looking as if he were twenty. After the initial shock fades, Marija embraces the impossible miracle. Together, they spend the day walking through Vukovar, talking. Her long-held wish to speak with her son and learn what happened to him finally comes true.

INTENTION

Before I was born, my mother wanted to name me Hrvoje after her cousin who went missing during the fall of Vukovar. Her father forbade it. “You cannot name a child after someone who might still be alive.” That sentence stayed with me. Shallow Ground is a response to that unresolved absence.

The film does not seek political answers or historical judgment. Instead, it focuses on the deeply intimate space of grief: the silence, the waiting, the what-ifs that never leave. It is about what it means to live with a wound that never closes, and to imagine closure when none was possible.

My goal was not to explain trauma, but to gently inhabit it. To create a space where emotion is felt in glances, gestures, and pauses. Inspired by my family’s story and filmed on 16mm, this film is my attempt to honor the unresolved and to offer a quiet goodbye.