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God Will Not Help film image; close on a woman among sheep

God Will Not Help

Bog neće pomoći

Vanguard

© Kinorama

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North American Premiere

At the turn of the 20th century, a Chilean woman shows up in a remote Croatian community of shepherds, claiming to be the widow of the family’s eldest son who moved away years ago in search of a more prosperous life abroad. While her appearance is at first exciting, her otherness quickly sows seeds of discord among the clan, whose mistrust towards anything and anyone different brings deeply buried tensions to a boil.

Manuela Martelli and Ana Marija Veselčić are riveting in their meaty, defiant turns as two outcasts who form an unlikely bond in the face of social rejection, which earned the two actors a joint award for Best Performance at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Evoking the work of cinema auteurs like Jane Campion, this wickedly moody, beautifully lensed feminist period piece is as formally accomplished as it is daring in its unique fusion of genre and ethnographic motifs.

 

Best Performance, Locarno 2025

Oct 5 & 6: Q&A

 

Supported by

Media Partner

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Community Partner

Director
Cast

Manuela Martelli, Ana Marija Veselčić, Filip Đurić, Mauro Ercegović Gracin, Nikša Butijer

Credits
Country of Origin

Croatia/Italy/Romania/
Greece/France/Slovenia

Year

2025

Language

In Croatian and Spanish with English subtitles

Film Contact
18+
137 min
Drama Family Relations Women Directors
Kinorama

Book Tickets

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Credits & Director

Producer

Ankica Jurić Tilić

Screenwriter

Hana Jušić

Cinematography

Jana Plećaš

Editor

Jan Klemsche

Production Design

Laura Boni

Original Music

Stavros Evangelou, Iris Asimakopoulou, Vasilis Chontos

Hana Jušić headshot

Hana Jušić

Hana Jusic, born 1983 in Šibenik, Croatia, obtained her master’s degree in film and TV directing from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. She wrote and directed several short films prior to her feature film debut, Quit Staring at My Plate (2016), a Croatian–Danish co-production that won more than 30 awards including Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Grand Prix at the Crossing Europe festival in Linz, and Best Feature Film at Valladolid, among others. Jusic’s screenwriting credits include two feature films and the TV series The Last Socialist Artefact (2021), which she co-wrote.

Filmography: Transmania (2016)

Photo by Glorija Lizde

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