Ekran+

Project from Austria. DIRECTOR Stefan Bohun. TUTOR Wojciech Marczewski.

 

Recruiter Jan stands up for temporary worker Anna and questions a system that treats people like goods.

 

Jan (27) is a recruiter at the temporary employment agency Integral. His workplace is in a branch in the middle of an industrial zone. Together with his colleagues Snjezana (25), Paul (29) and trainee Luis (22), he sits in a simply furnished, outdated office on the ground floor, with frosted windows through which you can neither see in nor out. He looks after two dozen clients, supplying them with temporary workers from his pool of 30-50 employees, many of whom have a history of migration. The assignments can last a few hours, a few days or two to three months. Depending on what the customer needs at the time. For the permanent workforce, temporary workers are often second-class citizens: they do the dirty work and endure all kinds of harassment as they live in constant fear of being dismissed.

 

Kalaš’s best friend PERO, a waste management entrepreneur, is seeking a concession to clean up illegal landfills in Krasno. Pero enlists Kalaš’s help to deal with GYPSY THE PROPHET, a Roma leader who controls the area’s illegal waste business. Knowing that the Roma fear Kalaš, Pero hopes to use him as leverage. However, Cigo Prorok reveals to Kalaš that Ana and Pero had been having an affair. Enraged, Kalaš attacks Pero, severing their friendship and any potential for future cooperation. Pero, however, manages to position himself as the community’s savior, using the rising tensions to fuel violence against the Roma population under the guise of solving the environmental crisis.

Encouraged by his childhood friend MARINA, now a police inspector, Kalaš decides to give sobriety a chance and refocus on repairing his estranged relationship with his daughter, JELENA. However, his nightmares and hallucinations only intensify. Jelena is drawn to working with horses, but she struggles to match her father’s skill. She finds his strict nature difficult to handle yet admires his ranching abilities. She dreams of leaving Krasno, going to university and building a different life for herself. Her only source of comfort is Nele, a young Roma boy. As both Kalaš and Jelena begin experiencing surreal nightmares, they unknowingly descend into a psychological and hallucinatory spiral. Their conflict culminates in a hallucinatory, chaotic night, during which a fire breaks out in the stables, nearly killing their horses. Gypsy The Prophet offers to break the "curse" haunting Kalaš, leading a shamanic Roma ritual that transforms into a night of surreal celebrations, fueled by alcohol, zeolite, hallucinogenic mushrooms and other substances. By the next morning, the nightmares are gone.

Jelena discovers that Pero had been illegally burying large amounts of pharmaceutical waste near the ranch. Ana had uncovered his criminal operations and confronted him. During their argument, Ana was accidentally killed and Pero buried her body along with the hazardous chemicals, believing he could cover up the damage once he secured his waste disposal contracts. Over time, the toxic waste had leaked from the barrels, contaminating the drinking water near the ranch and causing Kalaš and Jelena’s nightmares.

Following the fire, the horses instinctively turn away from Kalaš and gravitate toward Jelena. She chooses to remain silent about Pero’s crimes and Ana’s fate, knowing that revealing everything would break her father completely, just as he finally chooses to seek psychiatric treatment for his alcoholism. With Kalaš stepping back, Jelena quietly assumes control of the ranch, finding her own place in the world.