EL SHATT – A BLUEPRINT FOR UTOPIA

El Shatt in Egypt, in the middle of the desert, was both a haven and a projection. This is where in 1944, based on a deal between the Yugoslavian partisans led by Tito and the British allies, not only a refugee camp for the families of anti-fascist fighters from Dalmatia was built. This is where a model was created for the future Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – a state that was to build its founding narrative on the people’s liberation fight against fascism and declare collectively organized self-administration its social ideal. Director Ivan Ramljak offers us multifaceted insights into this long-forgotten piece of primordial communist history spelled out in reality. After painstaking research, he combines hundreds of historical photographs and some (few) film recordings of interviews with contemporary witnesses and the lively voices of those who were children back then and are over 80 today. Off-screen narrations of the struggle for survival, solidarity, and lived ideology, full of genuine love and subtle irony, revive a society that tried to build a tower on (moving) sand.