Hourglass

Two self-made filmmakers, a director with no self-confidence, a cameraman who has never seen a camera and a pitiful dog are fumbling around in the summer heat in Voyvodina. They want to make a film about today's Bácska, or what? - they keep forgetting.

In the summer of 1991 the war broke out in Croatia. In a holiday house in Fruška Gora hills in Serbia, near the border with Croatia, a group of young people are having a birthday party. They try to have some fun and act like nothing is going on. The party is shattered by the war. They can hear the artillery, but something is also happening between them. Inevitably, some of the boys end up on the frontline and everyone of them is effected by the war that is starting to rage. "The Party" is about individual destinies of the characters trapped in isolated house in hills and surrounded by growing paranoia of the officially not yet declared war.

The story of a soldier faced with mission of executing prisoners in an unspecified place and time. The film follows a hot summer day in the life of Džoni, a twenty-year-old recruit, who is sent to an abandoned farm on an unknown mission. The soldiers wait to battle unnamed terrorists, but instead, a bus full of prisoners arrives to the barracks. The commander orders the soldiers to execute the prisoners. At first, Džoni is shocked by the cruel killings, but as more prisoners arrive, he begins to enjoy the executions.

After sending their son to rehab from drug abuse, they find out that he has run away from the rehab center and that he has a dept to a local drug boss, which may be the reason he is on the run. His parents start blaming each other for their son's mistakes, and the father decides to leave their family home. In the next few days they both are trying to find their son, and they both face the brutal reality of life in Serbia on their own way.

An absurdist fable set in the numerous parallel realities of late-1990s Serbia. As a family disintegrates, Szabolcs Tolnai’s film effortlessly combines melancholic ruminations on middle age with dollops of unlikely colour, rejuvenation and invisible art projects.

The film is a black comedy that deals with privatization in Southeast Europe.

During the 1996/97 protests in Serbia a group of 200 students walked from Novi Sad to Belgrade to support students and citizens of the capital. A photobook by the same name, with photos from the same protests was published in 2016.