WHERE NO GOVERNMENT SHOULD EVER GO

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL, August 30, 2016 --  Kreso and Sikic are the Croatian equivalent of the odd couple, two government workers who couldn’t be more different in personality and behavior. The two men are paired together, under the auspices of a new Croatian government department called the State Family Inspectorate, to find widows of Croatian soldiers who are living in extra-marital unions so that their late husbands’ pensions can be revoked.

The film, called the Ministry of Love, stars Stjepan Peric as Kreso, an unemployed biologist who takes the job at the new government department reluctantly. His attitude draws the ire of the sandwich-chomping Sikic, who is determined to identify cheating widows and earn a bonus for himself. Sikic is played by Drazen Kuhn. After some misfires with widows that mark the duo as losers in the eyes of the new department, Kreso figures out a ruse that begins to work and eventually puts them at the top of the investigative unit.

But Kreso, who is having his own troubles with his wife, falls for one of the widows, and he begins to question the morality of the Croatian law authorizing the attempt to deprive the war windows of their husbands’ pensions. At the same time, his young son begins to ask his father about his job and what defines what Kreso tells him is the “common good”.

Directed by Croatia’s Pavo Marinkovic, this 103-minute film is funny and touching, with solid performances by Peric and Kuhn.


    Director Pavo Marinkovic at the Imperial Theater in Montreal

Marinkovic, who introduced the film at the Montreal festival, said the deeply unpopular law to revoke the pensions was never put into effect. Ministry of Love is a Croatian-Czech-Romanian co-production.