San Zimske Noci directed by Goran Paskaljevic is a film about an autistic girl, Jovanna, and how she affects the people closest to her. Jovana’s mother, Jasana, provides for her daughter the only way she can, with a bit of deception. Jasana finds an abandoned home and moves into it with her daughter. When the owner, a man named Lazar, comes home after a long prison-esque trip, things take a shift and the story really begins. The scene where Lazar first comes across Jovana is shot in a slow and soft manner. Lazar watches the girl from behind a glass door and is mesmerized. This scene becomes an outline for the relationships of others with Jovana. Everyone around the autistic girl is only gifted with an outwardly glance at her. Jovana is con-caved within herself; within her own world. As stated by Jovana’s teacher, “Autistic children don’t seem to be of this world. They have no interest in our world.”
The story moves forward and we are alongside Lazar as he goes through his stages of acceptance of Jovana. At first his mesmerized and takes on the role of a father figure. Next, he wants her to be “normal”, taking her to rituals where there are calls for her to “wake up”. Finally, there is equilibrium, when in a wind scene Lazar murmurs, “You don’t understand. I don’t understand either.” Tragedy leads us to the final going-ons of San Zimske Noci. We are left with Jovana, an autistic girl who rejects the world around her, Lazar, a man haunted by his past, together in a car with a choice. Lazar has reached the end and is confiding in Jovana, when a beautiful thing happens. It seems that for a brief instance Jovana chooses to step into our world. She realizes her situation. The final scenes of San Zimske Noci are of Jovana walking forward and away from Lazar, her choice made, and telling him, in her own way, to make his.
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