Biljana Srbljanović
BARBELO, ABOUT DOGS AND CHILDREN
Directed by Predrag Štrbac

Actors: Sanja Ristić-Krajnov, Aleksandra I. Pleskonjić, Marija Medenica, Nebojša Savić, Miroslav Fabri, Milan Kovačević, Jugoslav Krajnov, Tijana Maksimović, Aleksandar Gajin, Radoje Čupić, Olivera Stamenković

VIDEO CLIPS AND PHOTOS

Barbelo, of dogs and children is a story of dogs and children: human like-dogs, prematurely grown-up children, regular dogs and irregular children.

Barbelo is an act of confession by a young woman and people around her, weaved into several life episodes of the very same woman: from dissatisfaction with the marriage to an ambitious politician, achieved with great difficulties, through personal struggle to become pregnant and in search for any akin soul mate, even if that soul mate happens to be a policeman "working" on her husband's case, or a female dog breeder, forgotten and abandoned by everyone, through never materialised relationship with her own mother who rejected her emotionally a long time ago, to the remorse she feels towards her husband's first wife – a woman whom he left for her, and who committed suicide – in the name of love.
This is a story about love. No, this is a story about loving, about readiness to love without commitment, to enter an emotional relationship of any kind without any calculations, without the fear that all may not function as imagined and planned in advance – simply relinquishing to love and affection. To give, and not to take.
Milena, the young woman, has to discard all her previous delusions, to go through the painful catharsis of removal of the multiple shrouds from her face, to discover that love is not where she was hoping /expecting it to be (husband, mother, admirer...), but that the love is already happening to her, embodied in a little boy, her step-son, who is looking for the same things she is looking for.
If there is a happy ending after so much suffering, then this story certainly has got one.

Predrag Štrbac
Director