The Real Truth About the Fight
2023 · 14m · Croatia, Spain
Directed by Andrea Slaviček
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: dark, darkly comic
Teenage Lena recounts the events surrounding a fight at school — her unreliable narration slowly exposing the hierarchies, violence, and dark undercurrents of adolescent social life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Slaviček's mastery of the unreliable narrator form — deployed here through a teenage girl's fractured, witty, and quietly menacing account — marks this as a film that understands what the short can do that features cannot.
Unreliable teen narrator addressing camera — a trick that worked once, in 1996. Still, Croatian wit might save what American indies have flogged to death.
Unreliable teenage narrator addressing camera directly, her omissions becoming the subject — fourteen minutes that bets entirely on voice. Croatia/Spain coproduction with real craft instincts.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2023