Rooster’s Breakfast 2007

In the quiet Mura Valley near Gornja Radgona, Đuro, Primož Bezjak has just been laid off. His former boss points him toward a fresh opportunity at Pišti Gajaš’s auto repair shop, where Gajaš, Vlado Novak is an experienced but somewhat naive local mechanic who often reminisces about the past and hosts card games with friends. The shop becomes a crossroads for a string of precarious choices that pull the town’s residents into a web of debt, desire, and loyalty.

Lepec, the town’s biggest thug and owner of the local nightclub, Dario Varga frequently visits to repair his Mercedes, and Gajaš, while eager to keep the work steady, must navigate Lepec’s habit of paying with favors rather than cash. The arrangement is uneasy from the start, hinting at the vulnerabilities of a man who relies on memory and routine more than on modern safeguards.

Bronja, Lepec’s wife, Pia Zemljič, brings in her car for service and presses Đuro to drive her to Austria to obtain pills for a friend. The drive turns into a dangerous liaison as Đuro and Bronja begin a passionate affair, a truth that Gajaš eventually uncovers but keeps secret from Lepec, who grows suspicious when he finds a lighter Đuro had left in their bedroom.

Amid the chaos, Gajaš dreams of Severina, Severina Kojić, a well-known Croatian pop star touring the town. When Lepec delivers a small payment and an overwhelming promise to bring Severina to a dinner at Gajaš’s place, the night unfolds with a tense blend of fame’s fantasy and ordinary men’s ruin. That evening Severina joins the group, and the dynamic shifts as old loyalties collide with new temptations.

The next morning, Gajaš narrates a boast about a moment with Severina, claiming a rooster’s breakfast—morning sex—with the star. Đuro corrects him, explaining that the woman wasn’t the real Severina but a lookalike prostitute, a revelation that sharpens the sense that nothing here is straightforward. The situation spirals when Lepec discovers a necklace Đuro received from Bronja, exposing the depth of the affair and widening the rift between the two men.

A confrontation erupts, and Gajaš, driven by betrayal and desperation, pulls a gun and shoots Lepec before he can strike Đuro. The violence reconfigures everything: Lepec’s hold on the town slips, and Đuro finds himself drawn into a grim new fate. Some time later, Đuro visits Gajaš in prison, where the older man instructs him to take over the workshop and keep it orderly, a duty Đuro accepts as he settles there with Bronja and her daughter. The film closes on a note of uneasy quiet, with the workshop as a stubborn beacon of continuity in a town where loyalties shift as quickly as fortunes.