Together – Bejahad

Synopsis

Tigether-Bejahad begins after Bejahad, the annual gathering that once connected Jewish communities across the former Yugoslavia, has disappeared. In its absence, ties survive through commemorations, holidays, and fragile cross-border visits. The film follows five protagonists in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia: a community leader fighting to protect neglected Jewish cemeteries; an educator sustaining Holocaust teaching for younger generations; a choreographer keeping tradition alive in an increasingly mixed dance group; a public figure challenging ethnic discrimination in court and in politics; and an artist who has withdrawn from communal life. Their present-day efforts are interwoven with family histories of war, displacement, and survival, conveyed through archival footage and monochrome watercolor animation. As the last witnesses age and institutions weaken, the film asks what remains of a community when its people are scattered, and whether memory alone can still hold them together.

About the Director

Snježana Tribuson

Snježana Tribuson (b. 1957, Bjelovar) is a Croatian film and television director and screenwriter. She graduated in film and TV directing from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb in 1981 and has taught there since 2004. Her feature films include Recognition (Prepoznavanje, 1996), The Three Men of Melita Žganjer (1998), God Forbid a Worse Thing Should Happen (NNe dao Bog većeg zla, 2002), and All the Best (Sve najbolje, 2016). Her television and short-format work includes Black Chronicle or Women’s Day (Crna kronika ili Dan žena), Three Love Stories (Tri ljubavne priče), and During Roland Garros (Dok je trajao Roland Garros). She co-created and co-wrote the sitcom Take a Rest, You Deserved It (Odmori se, zaslužio si) with Goran Tribuson and directed episodes of the series. She is a film program selector at the Festival of Tolerance.

Artistic Statement

I began this film after years at the Festival of Tolerance, where I met members of small Jewish communities across the region. What stayed with me was not only loss, but persistence: people who keep teaching, organizing, and showing up for one another even when institutions fail them. I wanted a form that could hold both present life and inherited memory. Daily life and community gatherings are filmed observationally; Holocaust testimonies move into monochrome watercolor animation and archival footage. This shift is not decorative. It reflects how memory is carried: partly spoken, partly imagined, partly documented. Two protagonists are survivors, and their voices are irreplaceable. The film is urgent for that reason, but also because younger generations are deciding now whether this history will remain lived knowledge or become only a footnote.