In Stip, a small town in Macedonia, every January the local priest throws a wooden cross into the river and hundreds of men dive after it. Good fortune and prosperity are guaranteed to the man who retrieves it.
This time, Petrunija dives into the water on a whim and manages to grab the cross before the others.
Her competitors are furious – how dare a woman take part in their ritual? All hell breaks loose, but Petrunija holds her ground. She won her cross and will not give it up.
This is a simple, almost comical story that accentuates the absurdities of the world we live in. It is a story of a woman and her place in society, in a country very few take interests in, a country that has not much to offer except its imperfections.
This is a story of a woman and her place within her religion.What a true justice means within a society, is equality between men and women it’s final goal or is true justice a question of the individual’s sense of it, and doesn’t it changes from culture to culture, continent to continent?
To decode the human behavior and present it in all its complexity and vulgarity is beautiful to me. To be able to deliver the intricacy of Petrunija’s predicament through a very simple dramatic structure and minimal means is a challenge, to say the essential and not one thing more is where the beauty of the project lays.
Just as pure the character of Petrunija is, so the form will be.
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