Four-time international film award winner Rajko Grlic, eminent scholar in film at Ohio University, added another award to his shelf last month when his film Just Between Us received Best International Feature at the Raindance Film Festival.
The movie is based on a short story written by Grlic and was shot in Zagreb, Grlic’s hometown and the capital of Croatia.
Focusing on a pair of middle-class brothers and their wives, the story explores how those two couples, despite struggling with infidelity and double lives, end up as each other’s destinies.
Although he delves into serious themes, Grlic said he worked comedic moments into the plot to balance the film.
“I think (comedy) helps you swallow some bitter moments,” Grlic said. “For this film, I would like to see the faces (of the audience) with a little smile.”
The film begins with a funeral and ends in a graveyard, closing with the line: “Those bones here cheated on those bones there,” a line Grlic wrote based on stories he heard from his grandfather.
During a walk in the same graveyard featured in the film, Grlic’s 95-year-old grandfather told him tales of the love affairs among the people who had been dead for 20 years.
“He spent his life in this town and he knew everyone, and now the whole generation of his was in the graveyard,” Grlic said. “But he was talking about them like they were (alive).”
Grlic produced seven feature films before he came to the United States. After making How to Make Your Movie: An Interactive Film School, an OU-produced film now used as a guide in more than 100 film schools, Grlic started his career at OU.
In May 2010, Just Between Us premiered as part of a series called “The Films of Rajko Grlic: A Retrospective.”
“We screened most of his feature films in chronological order. Just Between Us was the final film of the retrospective,” said Ruth Bradley, director of the Athens Center for Film and Video.
Despite his international fame, Grlic said he makes a point to remember where he is by integrating OU into his films.
“I always put something (about OU in). In the previous film, Border Post, there was a small coffee shop called ‘Athens, Ohio,’ ” said Grlic. “It’s kind of a small indication of where I am.”
sw454711@ohiou.edu
