DREI WINTER

Zagreb, 1945. Tito’s communist Partisans, the National Liberation Army, have won the war against the fascists. Together with her mother, husband and her baby, Masha, a young woman moves into a house that once belonged to an aristocratic family that fled to the US and has now been placed under state control and partitioned. Much to her amazement, however, the house is not entirely deserted: one resident is still there.

1990. Masha is now a grown woman who still lives in that same house with her sister Dunja, her history-teacher husband Vlado, and their two daughters, Alisa and Lucija. The first democratic elections are held in Croatia and Slovenia, and the population revolts against the communist regime of Yugoslavia.

2011. The world has kept turning, and the people have changed as well. The house is now the setting for a family dinner. Tipsy Vlado is holding solemn monologues that the two daughters feel are sexist. Alisa lives and works in London; Lucija is set to marry a businessman the following day; and Croatia is negotiating the terms of its possible accession to the European Union.

Tena Štivičić’s THREE WINTERS is the epic story of a completely normal family – seen through the lens of three historic moments in the history of Croatia. Each private action is political, and politics affect personal decisions and destinies. Štivičić interweaves private and societal dramaturgies like no other, bearing witness to a wounded world that is constantly changing.