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• Cineuropa
• 2 articles

Year of production : 2018

Director(s) : Teona STRUGAR MITEVSKA

Every 19th January during Epiphany, a unique ceremony takes place
all around Macedonia: the high priest throws a cross into the local
waters while hundreds of men charge for it. The one who finds it is
blessed for the whole next year and becomes kind of a local hero.
Petrunija is single unemployed 31-year-old woman and a historian
who lives with her parents. Returning home from a failed job interview
in a sweatshop factory she witnesses the ceremony, decides to jump,
swims and catches the cross. Immediately, the men attack her and
wrestle the cross out of her hands since as a woman she has no right
to participate. A commotion follows and at the moment of heightened
confusion Petrunija runs away with the cross. Over the next few hours
her jump into the icy water becomes an Internet sensation. Petrunija
is taken to a police station, and this is where her ordeal begins: against
the local men, against the world, against the system. From a room to
a corridor, to a room again, she spends the night being transferred
around the impersonal governmental spaces. She insists that she is the
winner and refuses to return the cross. One by one, the policemen, the
inspector, the priest unsuccessfully try to convince her to give up.
Through these 24 hours we discover a society full of stereotypes, with
collapsed social and justice system.