DocFest: Museum of the Revolution

“The wind got up in the night and took our plans away,” reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavia. It was supposed to “safeguard the truth” about the Yugoslav people. But the plan never got beyond the construction of the basement. The derelict building now tells a very different story from the one envisioned by the initiators 60 years ago. In the damp, pitch-dark building live the outcasts of a society reshaped by capitalism.

Museum of the Revolution focuses on a girl who earns a little cash on the street by cleaning car windows with her mother. The girl has a close friendship with an old woman who also lives in the basement. Against the background of a transforming city, the three women find refuge in each other.

Presented as part of San Francisco Documentary Festival 2023.