Croatian Oscar Entry ‘Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day’ Director Ivona Juka Talks Challenges Of Making 1950s LGBT Persecution Drama
Ivona Juka’s drama Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day, which is Croatia’s Oscar entry this year and is screening in L.A. today as part of a guerilla awards campaign, breaks fresh ground for its exploration of the persecution of Yugoslavia’s LGBT community under Tito in the 1950s.
Croatian actor Dado Ćosić stars as partisan hero Lovro who fought the local fascist forces of the Ustashas and the Nazis as a young man during WWII and then built a career as a film director in peacetime.
Ćosić is joined in the film by actors from across the ex-Yugoslavia in the roles of ex-resistance comrades and cinema collaborators, including Nenad (Djordje Galic), Stevan (Slaven Doslo) and Ivan (Elmir Krivalic).
Some 16 years after their wartime bravery, Lovro and his friends come under the scrutiny of Tito’s Communist Party for their sexual orientation.
