Arsen Anton Ostojić
In order to recover the body of her son lost during the war in Bosnia, a grieving, but strong-willed Muslim woman, Halima, must track down her estranged niece, who we find carries a mysterious connection to him.
Ivan is a 36-year old ex-rock singer and a disillusioned war veteran who lost both legs in the recent Croatian Homeland War. His father, Izidor, was a well-known political prisoner in the former Yugoslavia, and is now standing as an independent candidate for the Croatian Parliament. Then a face from the past re-appears: an impoverished Serbian refugee called Simo, who has recently returned to the town. As an ex-communist official, Simo imprisoned Izidor decades ago. He knows certain facts about Izidor that could destroy his reputation and wreck his political campaign. Simo demands money, in return for his silence and he also has a secret rendezvous with Ivan's mother, Ana. Soon a long-buried secret surfaces once more - with huge repercussions for Ivan. He starts to provoke hard-line Croatians by singing Serbian nationalistic songs, daring them to kill him.
The film is set over the course of a New Year's Eve night in the Croatian port city of Split, where it follows three parallel plots. The first plot line features a small-time drug dealer Nike (Marinko Prga) and a young widow Marija (Nives Ivankovic); the second plot line deals with a drug addict called Maja (Marija Skaricic) who decides to have sex with an US Navy sailor called Franky (Coolio) in exchange for some heroin; the third one shows a young couple, Luka and Andela (Vicko Bilandzic and Ivana Roscic) who spend the night desperately looking for a place to celebrate the New Year by having their first sexual experience. The plots are connected through Dino Dvornik's concert, where all of them pass through at some point, and through the omnipresent fireworks that dot the night sky over the course of the film.
