21st Annual European Union Film Festival
Screening Dates
  • November 29, 2018 6:30
Croatia

Family is a prison in Croatian writer-director Hana Jušić’s stellar debut feature, winner of the Fedeora prize for Best Euro-Mediterranean Film at Venice. Raw and at times uncomfortably realist—but dappled with moments of disarming comic levity—Quit Staring at My Plate follows the stifling domestic life of Marijana (alluring newcomer Mia Petričević), a 24-year-old living in squalor and too-close quarters with her domineering father, careless, crass mother, and mentally disabled older brother. When the patriarch suffers a debilitating stroke, Marijana becomes the family’s sole breadwinner, and the autonomy it affords her awakens an unexpected appetite for sex and control. A delayed coming-of-age story with feminist potency, Jušić’s first foray into feature filmmaking was Croatia’s official submission to this year’s 90th Oscars.