Renata Lučić, both director and protagonist, returns to her hometown to visit her father in a small village in the Croatian part of Slavonia, near the Bosnian border. She has always hated the rural area on the banks of the river Sava, “those endless meadows and gardens,” as she reveals right in the opening sequence. Even as a child she knew that she would leave. Like her older brother, like her mother. And like 124,667 other women who “went West” after the war, usually to Germany or Austria, to work – and never to return.
She now hangs out in the almost abandoned and womanless village with her estranged father Tomislav and his best friend Joso. The men follow their routines, working in the forest or eating river fish they caught themselves. Emotional closeness and intimacy gradually form in at first seemingly trivial conversations and despite initial misunderstandings and distinctly different world views. The film project, which started as the story of an emigration, gradually turns into a sensitive study of loneliness, human relationships, friendship and love; about the beauty of the little things that leads to larger insights – not just for Renata.

In the north of Georgia, twelve kilometres from the Russian-influenced region of Abkhazia, a family are realising their dream. Under the optimistic motto “Plant the Future,” the Georgian government has launched a funding programme that enabled the people in this state which has been shaken by wars and crises for years to make a fresh start on their own farmland. With this support Soso, a retired engineer, took the big step in 2021 with his wife and two young sons and began growing blueberries.
Director Elene Mikaberidze and a dynamic camera follow the bold endeavour of the greenhorn farmers as they settle into their unfamiliar new life month by month. In the evenings, they pass the time with games and conversations, while the television is on in the background: images of a Ukraine under attack, news of the escalation in the Middle East remind the adults of the Russo-Georgian War sixteen years ago. Soso, the head of the family, contemplates his homeland in the midst of an escalating global situation. What dreams will still find a place there? Mother Nino is worried about her children’s future. She wants them to have the freedom to go their own way, to travel abroad and leave Georgia behind. Whether these ideas correspond with Soso’s remains to be seen.