El Shatt – A Blueprint for Utopia

Ivan Ramljak
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Croatia,
Serbia
2023
96 minutes
Croatian, Arabic
Subtitles:
English
El Shatt in Egypt, in the middle of the desert, was both a haven and a projection. This is where in 1944, based on a deal between the Yugoslavian partisans led by Tito and the British allies, not only a refugee camp for the families of anti-fascist fighters from Dalmatia was built. This is where a model was created for the future Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – a state that was to build its founding narrative on the people’s liberation fight against fascism and declare collectively organized self-administration its social ideal.

Director Ivan Ramljak offers us multifaceted insights into this long-forgotten piece of primordial communist history spelled out in reality. After painstaking research, he combines hundreds of historical photographs and some (few) film recordings of interviews with contemporary witnesses. The lively voices of those who were children back then and are over 80 today tell their stories offscreen: of the struggle for survival, solidarity and lived ideology, in short, of a daily life that included self-organised schools, workshops, canteen kitchens, even a newspaper. Ramljak, tongue firmly in cheek, takes up the thread of history and juxtaposes his skillfully arranged archive material with staged scenes played by the ensemble of a theatre that was founded in El Shatt at the time.

Borjana Gaković

#True story
#History
#Documentary
#Yugoslavia
#Communism
#Tito