What Is a Man without a Moustache? 2005

Tatjana and Miljenko are a young married Croatian couple living in Germany. When Miljenko is killed in a fall at a construction site, his employer pays a financial settlement to his grieving widow, setting the stage for a life-changing turn of events. This sudden loss forces Tatjana to rethink her future and, in a quiet shift of their shared history, she returns to the rural countryside of Croatia—the place where the couple first met.

Back in the small town, Tatjana encounters Father Stipan, an alcoholic Catholic priest toiling away in a decaying parish church. The reunion with the land and its people awakens a hunger for stability and possibility in Tatjana. She uses the settlement money to romanticize a hill—the very ground where Miljenko once proposed to her—hoping to transform memory into a tangible future. Her audacious move pays off when a local developer uncovers precious minerals on that hill and offers her a handsome sum in exchange for the land, catapulting Tatjana into a new realm of wealth and influence.

With newfound riches, Tatjana expands her footprint in the local economy, purchasing a grocery store to serve the community and a hotel to host travelers who pass through the aging town. The sudden attention from admirers intensifies as her wealth grows, and one of the major players who steps into the scene is Marinko, her husband’s brother who has also recently returned from Germany. The prospect of love and loyalty becomes more complicated as old ties are tested and new ones form under the bright glare of prosperity.

But Tatjana’s generosity pulls the priest into a precarious moral conflict. She offers much of her fortune to him with the goal of repairing the church and safeguarding the parish from collapsing financially, hoping to shield a symbol of the community while also pursuing a personal connection. The priest, however, must weigh his religious duties against the powerful pull of a blooming romance. The tension between money offered for salvation and love offered for companionship puts him in a painful dilemma, especially as the bishop pushes to relocate the church if funds aren’t raised soon.

Amid this fragile dance of faith, money, and affection, the story unfolds with a quiet, human lens on a town in flux. The old ways collide with new wealth, and the people of the parish navigate how to preserve their shared identity in the face of temptation, desire, and the promise of renewal. The film probes how one woman’s decision to reshape her life—and the lives around her—can ripple through a community that clings to its traditions even as it eyes a more uncertain future, where love, duty, and ambition are on a delicate, often heartbreaking, collision course.