Starring: Loti Kovacic, Mackenzie Mazur, Gregor Bakovic, Claudia Karvan, Flora Feldman
Distributor: Bonsai Films
Runtime: 80 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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After her mother’s sudden death, 10-year-old Moja becomes the unexpected grown-up of her fragmented family, trying to bring her troubled older sister Vesna and distant father together.
The unusual title is actually a combination of the names of two sisters. The names are Slovenian. And this brief film is a coproduction between Australia and Slovenia.
Filmed in the Melbourne suburbs, the film also uses the older box screen framework, making the film look something of a home movie – and, in a way, it is.
At the centre of the film is 10-year-old Moja. The young Loti Kovavic gives a telling performance – not always saying a great deal, but very expressive with her body language, expressive and inexpressive facial responses. While the other characters are well drawn, it is Moja who keeps our attention.
The family is living in Melbourne, having migrated from Slovenia. At the outset, the mother of the family has died and each of the family members, father and older sister, react in their different ways. The father Milos (Bakovic) is somewhat in denial and a touch remote, while the sister, Vesna (Mazur) is pregnant (no explanation of the baby’s father), sad at her mother’s death, clashing with her father, bonding with her sister, but having moments of reckless activity which seem self-destructive.
So, it is left to Moja to try to keep the family together even when she does not quite understand what is going on. She is concerned about her sister, trying to buy baby clothes, inspecting a pram. The three have meals together, sometimes happy, sometimes tense.
There is an unexpected sequence, some moments of calm, when Vesna recites an emotional poem that she has composed for Moja, something of a pause in the drama, glimpses of happiness and hope.
A local mother, Miranda, and energetic daughter, Danger, played by Claudia Karvan and Flora Feldman, befriend Moja, the two girls deciding to become friends and enjoying playing together. Finally, with all the difficulties and the inner grief at her mother’s death, relating to her father, her sister giving birth and seeming carefree, Moja finally finds a mother figure in the kindly neighbour.
It is a slice of life film, a slice of migrant life in Australia, a slice of sad life, but held together for audience response by the presence and performance of Loti Kovacic.
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