Croatian Restored Classic - Kaja, I'll kill you

Croatian Restored Classic: Kaja, I’ll Kill You

dir. Vatroslav Mimica; Croatia; 1967; 81 min

When it premiered at the Pula Film Festival in 1967, Kaja, I’ll Kill You was not received as just another war film, but as a provocation. Having already earned acclaim in Pula with Prometheus of the Island of Viševica and Monday or Tuesday, Vatroslav Mimica created a work that stripped the war genre of its expected heroism, linear storytelling, and clear-cut divisions between good and evil.

Set in a small coastal town under Italian occupation, the film presents fascism not merely as an external force but as something that emerges among people who know one another—neighbours, acquaintances, and those who until recently shared the same everyday world. Mimica tells this story through a fragmented, surreal, and allegorical structure, transforming an idyllic setting into a landscape of irrational violence.

The reaction at the time was fierce: the film provoked outrage, and the director and crew were reportedly pelted with stones. Today, Kaja, I’ll Kill You returns as a restored classic and the concluding chapter of Mimica’s informal modernist trilogy on war, society, and anxiety—a film about the moment when evil ceases to appear as an exception and begins to be accepted as the prevailing order.

This year’s film season at Barone concludes with a screening of this modernist classic, recently digitally restored and presented in collaboration with the Croatian State Archives.

TICKETS: €4.20 for Friends Club members / €6 regular price

Available online and at the House of Arts Arsen box office.

Friends Club members can claim their discount at physical points of sale upon presentation of a valid membership card.