Sandbag Dam

It appears from the title already that the film Sandbag Dam works on a metaphorical level, albeit one that is entirely unsubtle. Yet, it feels harder to unravel this side of the film. The romance between two young adults in a rural croatian town feels like it is attempting to do something more than being a queer drama, but it still feels somewhat limited.

The storyline could be described as a textbook queer plot: the closeted Marko, who has a girlfriend, has his machist framework shook when Slaven returns to the town for the burial of his father. They consume secretly, and when the truth comes out, there are consequences for both.

Shot in a so-called hyperrealist fashion, with a handheld camera and a framing tendency that focuses on capturing a reality rather than creating a visual environment, it is easy to miss the metaphorical structure designed by Cernic. The incoming flood, hinted at but never fully appearing, hints at the impending explosion of passion, prevented by a feeble heteronormative blockage, the sandbag dams. The rabbit has a special connotation, as the centrality of arm wrestling, through which Marko excersises his perceived heterosexuality, his assumed machism, "strength".
No matter how in the nose these symbols are, the mise en scene makes them tangent to a point that they can be easily missable

Sandbag Dam is a film of lost potentials, that could have been a more complete work, of which the hints are way too deeply hidden under a rumble of clichés and simplicities.

RATING: 2.5/5

Original title: Sandbag Dam

Directed by: Čejen Černić Čanak

Country: Croatia

Year: 2025

Length: 87 min.

Premiere: Berlinale 2025