Berlinale 2025: ‘Sandbag Dam’ World Premiere Of Exquisite Croatian Queer Drama

Croatia is a country in the Balkans that shares the Adriatic Sea with Italy on the west side. Another shared stat with Italy is that the majority of the country is Catholic, and both have been slow to establish LGBTQ protection laws but have made significant advances in this still fairly new century.  Same-sex marriage is not recognized in Italy and legally prohibited in Croatia.

Italian filmmakers have made quite a few gay-themed movies through the years, but the subject matter has been fairly taboo in Croatian cinema with only a handful of films even peripherally tackling queer issues. Čejen Černić Čanak’s deeply affecting second feature,Sandbag Dam (Zečji nasip),  may be the very first Croatian coming-of-age gay drama.

I bring up Italy because I recognized the homophobic traits of many of the inhabitants in Čanak’s film, having visited my family in Sicily quite often from 2000 to 2011. I stopped going because of the harsh, anti-gay sentiment that covertly emanated from many of the locals, despite the overt half-smiles. There’s only so much hypocrisy a person can take. But enough about me…

Set in a small Croatian village where rising rivers threaten to flood the town Sandbag Dam centers on 18-year-old high school senior Marko (newcomer Lav Novosel, in a breakthrough performance), who lives with his bunny loving brother Fico (Leon Grgić), a boy with Downs Syndrome. He spends time training with his father for a local arm-wrestling competition. At night he hangs out with his jock friends and his girlfriend, Petra (Franka Mikolaci). He appears to be content, but we also get the sense that something is missing.

One day his childhood bud, Slaven (Andrija Žunac), returns home for his father’s funeral. We slowly learn the two teenage boys were more than just friends and Slaven was banished from the village by his own parents, thanks to Marko’s homophobic mother, three years earlier. Marko initially avoids Slaven but when they do connect, their romance is instantly rekindled.

Čanak’s slow burn narrative relies heavily on extreme close ups and handheld camera shots, which can be more than jarring but creates the perfect nerve-racking atmosphere, punctuated by tremendous anxiety and…hope.

Handsome Novosel has an endearing Timothée Chalamet charisma and even resembles the actor. He never overplays Marko’s conflicted feeling or his obvious desire to be who he is. And the rest of the ensemble do wonderful work. In addition, Čanak never gives in to inauthenticity for the sake of false satisfaction. Her screenplay walks a tightrope and ends perfectly, allowing her audience to fill in the blanks.

Can anyone perceived as different or abhorrent stay in a stifling and repressed small town and be who they really are?

LGBTQ people are being targeted in every corner of the world thanks to demonization by religious zealots and scapegoating by politicos.

Bravo to all the creatives involved in Sandbag Dam for telling an urgent and important story and never making it feel like a polemic. In the end, it’s about two people who formed a romantic bond and have an opportunity at a second chance, despite the machinations and manipulations of misguided, outside detractors.