God Will Not Help

God Will Not Help / Bog neće pomoći 

Hana Jušić, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Greece, France, Slovenia, 2025, 137’  

In this raw, poetic neo-western, the arrival of a mysterious stranger in the Croatian hills in the early 20th century disrupts the established order of a traditional shepherding community.

On a stormy night at the beginning of the 20th century, a mysterious woman appears at the door of a modest farmhouse at the foothills of the Dinaric Alps. Milena, a shepherdess taking care of the house while the men are away with the sheep in the mountains, welcomes the foreigner with a cocked rifle in her hands. But the initial distrust soon gives way to curiosity: with the help of gestures and pictures in the stranger’s travel Bible, Milena soon realises that standing before her is her sister-in-law. In a small bundle, she carries some bones, which is all that is left of her husband, Milena’s brother, Marko.

“In God Will Not Help, the two women (Teresa and Milena) are outside of traditional society, and through them, we see civilization as something alien to nature; something oppressive. Teresa, as a character, is placed in nature but she’s not really there – she has her mission to follow. It’s only through Milena that she allows nature to come closer to her in the course of the film, but at one point she is accused of being a witch – another dichotomy relating women to nature invented by men.”
Hana Jušić

Hana Jušić has written and directed several short films before directing her feature film debut Quit Staring at My Plate in 2016, which won more than thirty awards, including FEDEORA for Best European film at Venice Days. Her screenwriting credits also include the TV series The Last Socialist Artefact (2021).