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  Status:  completed
  


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  Format:  feature 
  


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  Year:  2019.
  


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  Length:  97 min
  


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  Genre:  drama
  


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  Language:  Croatian, German
  


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  Funding:  HAVC – Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Aide aux cinemas 
du monde – CNC, Film Center Serbia, Film Fund Sarajevo
  

The feature-length debut from Jure Pavlović, whose acclaimed short ‘PICNIC’ won the European Film Academy Award (EFA) for the Best European short film in 2015, MATER is an intimate and unflinching portrayal of a complex Mother-Daughter relationship enduring it’s final days and hours.

In MATER, Jasna returns to her childhood home in order to care for her dying mother.

Transplanted from her family life in Germany and caring for her own young children, she is called home to Croatia, where she finds herself enveloped in a very different and quickly suffocating environment. Stubborn, confrontational and perhaps even manipulative, Jasna’s mother does not make her daughter’s return easy. Jasna calls on family members, old friends and carers in an attempt
to provide comfort in these final days. Instead, she realises that she must navigate a tangled web of grudges dating back to her own childhood, hoping to find a semblance of peace.

Quietly intense and shot with a striking sense
of realism, Pavlović’s first feature immediately establishes the Croatian filmmaker as a talent living up to his early acclaim. As Jana, Dana Lorenci-Flatz offers a vulnerable performance as a woman forced to strength of her love, daunted by the authority still radiating from her mother’s immobile body.

A slow-burning meditation on loss, forgiveness and pain, MATER is provocative and blisteringly honest independent cinema.

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  Directed by: Jure Pavlović
  


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  Written by: Jure Pavlović 
  


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  Director of Photography: Jana Plećaš
  


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  Produced by:   Bojan Kanjera, Biljana Tutorov, Jure Pavlović
  


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  Production Company:  SEKVENCA (Croatia)
  
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  Co-Production Companies:   LES FILMS DE L’ŒIL SAUVAGE (France) , WAKE UP FILMS (Serbia), NOVI FILM (Bosnia and Hercegovina), PEGLANJE SNOVA (Croatia)
  
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  Associate Co-Production Companies:   IN VIVO FILMS (France) , ANALOG VISION (Czech Republic)
  


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  Funding:   HAVC – Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Aide aux cinemas 
du monde – CNC, Film Center Serbia, Film Fund Sarajevo
  

Jure Pavlović (1985) graduated directing at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, Croatia. He took part in various international workshops like Berlinale Talents, Sarajevo Talent Campus, Sources 2, etc. His short films were screened and awarded on numerous international festivals such as Berlinale – Berlin International Film Festival and Clermont-Ferrand. His short film PICNIC won the European Film Academy Award (EFA) for the Best European short film in 2015. MATER is his feature debut.

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  Sources 2 script Development
  


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  Branko Bauer script development
  


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  Microwave Film London project development
  


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  Maia project development
  


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  When East Meets West pitching forum
  

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  Sales Agent
  


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  Buyers