Museum of the Revolution

“The wind got up in the night and took our plans away,” reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavia. It was supposed to “safeguard the truth” about the Yugoslav people. But the plan never got beyond the construction of the basement.

The derelict building now tells a very different story from the one envisioned by the initiators 60 years ago. In the damp, pitch-dark building live the outcasts of a society reshaped by capitalism. The film focuses on a girl who earns a little cash on the street by cleaning car windows with her mother. The girl has a close friendship with an old woman who also lives in the basement. Against the background of a transforming city, the three women find refuge in each other.

    “Monumental in its tender exploration of hope lost and found“
    Kirsten Johnson

    “A delicate, beautifully composed and intense film“
    Helena Třeštíková

    “As unconventional as the architect wanted the museum to be“
    Tue Steen Müller

    “Resonant with the works of Jana Ševčíková and Wang Bing… an overlooked mirror of contemporary Serbia“
    JP Sniadecki

    “Stylistically dreamlike and emotionally intimate… (Keča’s) film favours emotions over information, empathy over drama.“
    “The film drifts in and out of the reportage approach, alternating with a more dreamlike state. Where image and sound get disconnected, and where shallow focus, slowly drifting takes, intimate close-ups, moody soundscapes and the absence of any voice-over help us to let go of our ‘news stance’ as spectators and instead engage emotionally with mother and daughter.“
    Kees Driessen, Business Doc Europe