Metastases 2009

Set in 1999, the film follows four unconventional friends from a Zagreb neighbourhood – Krpa Rene Bitorajac, Filip Franjo Dijak, Kizo Robert Ugrina and Dejo Rakan Rushaidat – who are all football fans and Dinamo Zagreb supporters.

Krpa is an antisocial football hooligan and a Croatian War of Independence veteran who constantly abuses his wife. Throughout the story, he also insults and physically attacks several people who speak up about his behaviour. In the final scene, he robs a betting shop and ends up in a tense foot chase with two police officers, exposing a life of aggression and volatility that frames the group’s world.

Filip is a drug addict who spent three years in a rehabilitation program in Spain. When he returns to Zagreb at the start of the film, his parents try to persuade him to find a job to keep him from slipping back into old habits. That same day, he reunites with the other three members of the group at a neighbourhood bar, where old bonds re-emerge and tensions simmer just beneath the surface.

Kizo is an ailurophiliac alcoholic and Croatian War of Independence veteran. He lives with his mother after his father’s death and carries a quiet burden that seems to fuel his dependence on alcohol. One day, he heads to the bar hoping to join the group for a match, only to discover they had already left. He returns home, stopping at a supermarket to buy more drink and cat food, before being seen tending to a litter of kittens in his backyard, a vignette that humanizes him amid the rough edges of the group.

Dejo, half Serb, is the son of a former Yugoslav officer. He is also a drug addict who owes money to people, and his ethnicity becomes a target for insults from Krpa, who even goads him to kiss the Altar of the Homeland, a moment that underscores the ethnic tensions simmering beneath their friendship.

The plot deepens as Filip and Dejo travel to Sarajevo to buy heroin. On the journey back, they visit Filip’s aunt and uncle somewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The relatives propose giving his parents two bags of potatoes, but there isn’t enough space in Dejo’s car to transport them immediately, so they agree to move the bags later. Filip hides the drug inside one of the bags, yet the scheme unravels when the bags are moved by a neighbor of Filip’s aunt and uncle, Reuf, who is unaware of the drugs. The near-miss with border control heightens the tension, testing loyalty, risk, and the lines between friendship and crime.