Neighbors
The director of a mental hospital in the Croatian city of Osijek decided to close his institution and to include its residents into society. As a social worker he could not tolerate the feeling of being a director of a notorious closed institution run like a prison. The film follows several former patients, intimately portraying their everyday dramas and challenges they face as they go out into free and unknown world. At the first meeting, they introduce themselves by the diagnoses rather than names. In the following months, which are compressed in a compact feature film, they transform into personalities with complex life paths as we observe them trying to put back together the pieces of their broken lives.
Tomislav Žaja is a producer, writer and director with 25 years of experience in film and television productions. Wrote, directed and produced about fifty documentaries, few shorts and experimental films, two TV adaptations of theatre plays and three fiction films. He is the managing director and founder of the production company, Gral Film. He is a member of the European Documentary Network.