A man stays alone with his children in a half demolished house in the middle of a desolate field. His wife has just been killed by a grenade in a military battle. He is expecting a new attack. Instead a wandering caravan called Circus Fantasticus stops by the house. They bring along the dying director of the circus. Is it possible for anything beautiful to happen in a landscape of war and death? Can life go on? Is it possible to realize that death does not exist?

When I was born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia it seemed that the dark forces of evil had been defeated during the Second World War and we were going to live in brotherhood, unity and peace till the end of our days. What is left from all this are beautiful childhood memories. When we think about how humanity has lived for the past few thousand years, we don’t get impression that it lived in peace which was occasionally broken by wars. To the contrary it lived in war with occasional cease fires. To see whether this is still the case, we only need to switch on the television. War changes its form, but that does not mean that it is not an integral part of human nature and as such a part of the environment in which we live. It would be an illusion to think that this fact will change considerably in the coming few centuries. Silent Sonata is a film which tackles the question of how to survive in such an environment. It is set in a war-zone which is not linked to any space or time. It could be happening a hundred years ago or three thousand years from now. People don’t speak in this film, but that also does not mean that it’s a silent film. Words are meaningless in war. If they had any power, there would be no wars. Silent Sonata is a film of feelings, atmosphere, sensibility, surreality. A film which is about that which cannot be expressed with words.