When the Yugoslav civil war began in the early 1990’s, families were torn apart and displaced. For one woman, Mina (Iva Ilinčić), however, she must choose between her father and her boyfriend. Your Guardian sees the recent graduate torn between staying true to her heart or being loyal to her family.
Your Guardian is short, sweet, and to the point, and it tells the story of a young woman thrown into a precarious situation, one in which I would venture most individuals would have difficulty stomaching. She has her whole life in front of her, and Writer-Director Mimi Vlaović does a wonderful job of showcasing the truth of this situation.
Drab and simplistic colors help to guide Your Guardian forward, and this is a brilliant reflection of the situation in which Yugoslavia would have found itself at this time in history. Viewers are pulled into the film and able to understand the dark nature of Mina’s life, and I think that Your Guardian is successful in pulling viewers into the story as a result. There’s really only one moment in the film in which bright light plays a role, where something other than darkness or unimpressionable colors take the stage, and that’s at the film’s opening. The first time Mina and her boyfriend Igor (Petar Đurđević) touch, a vibrant light sits behind them, illuminating their faces, trying to assure viewers that everything will be alright. Whether or not that happy ending comes to be doesn’t really matter in this regard, but the fact that Vlaović is able to incorporate these things into her film is impressive.
Vlaović does a great job of creating an artistic film that accurately captures the tone and emotion of the Yugoslav civil war. Throughout the course of Your Guardian, viewers can feel what Mina feels, they can understand all that is transpiring, and Vlaović approaches the content differently than I have ever seen before, separating her film from the others that came before her, and effectively developing powerful emotion from beginning to end.
Written & Directed by Mimi Vlaović.
Starring Iva Ilinčić, Dragan Mčianović, Petar Đurđević, Sonja Kolačarić, Marija Babić, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
