Home Is Where My Age Is, 2013

documentary film
duration: 22′ 50″

Home is where my age is is a documentary that scratches beneath the dull surface to portray the characters and personalities during old age without the faceless common denominators, allowing the viewer to see themselves in each of the protagonists. Through cross-cutting, the film follows the everyday life of people with four different views on life, love and death. These views are held by a married couple, Štefanija and Antun Varga (67 and 70), a poet, Ivica Jembrih (75) and a widow, Ivka Ljubić, (76). They are all spending their remaining days in a nursing home. The film shows how the protagonists use the time they have left and how much value they place on rules they have lived by. They share the same roof and they are old – that is all they have in common. Although they live under the same roof, they are completely different, they think differently and they lead different lives. The camera lurks through their world and captures the relationships they have created in the nursing home – with friends, care providers, each other and themselves. In this way, the documentary gathers pace of a feature film, with occasional addresses to the camera as hints to understanding the real state of things.

Anja Strelec was born in 1985 in Varaždin where she graduated high school. She got her degree in journalism at the Faculty of Political Science in 2008. After that, she worked in Argentina teaching Croatian language and history to Croatian emigrants and their descendants in several cities. In 2009, she received Eurodysee, an international scholarship, which allowed her to work in the Spanish Regional Office in Brussels for European Audiovisual Projects and Promotion of Croatian Counties. She did her postgraduate studies in film and audiovisual production in Montpellier, France. Home is where my age is is her second film. She is currently living and working in Zagreb as a freelance investigative reporter, coordinator and director for audiovisual projects.

Tomislava Jukić is 28; she took a degree in law in Zagreb and works in the field of law. She was involved in amateur theatre (Theatron, run by B. Barlek in Varaždin high school, SKS Labos by D. Patafte, the first Cultural Fair in the Zagreb Student Centre, ambient theatre workshop with Z. Burić and H. F. Larsen in 2010, etc.). She participated in the film workshops Videoaktiv-FADE IN in 2012 and Blank in 2013. She is currently writing a script for a short feature film.