PETTY THIEVES
Mate Ugrin
Fünferfilm / Kadromat, In The Cut
Young loner RIO gets by with seasonal jobs and petty thefts in resorts on the Adriatic coast. His life is thrown out of balance when ANDREA, a seasonal worker from Serbia, becomes his partner in crime.
RIO, a young man from a village in central Istria in Croatia, makes a living as a kitchen helper and petty thief in resorts along the Adriatic coast. One evening, ANDREA, a seasonal worker from Serbia, notices Rio stealing at the beach. She suggests helping out with thefts in exchange for a share of profits. As the two spend time breaking into bungalows and hotel rooms looking for jewellery and money, they get closer. But the tourist season is slow and it isn’t long before Andrea gets fired from the resort and decides to leave for Germany.
MATE UGRIN / IMDB
MATE UGRIN graduated in film from the Academy of Arts in Belgrade in 2012. In 2016, he completed his Master of Arts degree at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts in the class of Angela Shanelec, and afterwards the master program at the Berlin University of the Arts in the class of Thomas Arslan. His short films have been screened successfully at international film festivals (Sarajevo Film Festival) and received numerous awards - including the prestigious German First Steps Award and the Oscar-qualifying Heart Of Sarajevo for Best Short Film in 2021. Besides CineLink, his debut feature PETTY THIEVES was also presented and developed at When East Meets West , where it won the main prize, Eave producers workshop and Torino ScriptLab.
Director’s statement
My motivation for making this film is my connection to the Istrian peninsula, where I grew up and which has been radically transformed to accommodate mass tourism. In PETTY THIEVES I seek to portray a community whose infrastructure and activities are completely subordinated to touristic needs. During summer, seasonal migrant workers flock into the community, but are not able to integrate into it. With this film, I am drawing from my own experience of migration, accompanied by inevitable attempts at assimilation in new surroundings. At the same time, I want to show how the main characters of the film fight against the existing living conditions, and try to articulate new perspectives and forms of togetherness. In order to achieve a high degree of realism, I will work with non-professional actors from the region, who have similar experiences as the fictional characters in the film, and the screenplay will be further developed together with the cast, by implementing their own experiences.
KARSTEN KRAUSE / IMDB
KARSTEN KRAUSE is a filmmaker, producer and cameraman. In addition to numerous presentations of various projects at international film festivals, in 2011 he won the German Short Film Award in Gold together with Philip Widmann for the documentary DIE FRAU DES FOTOGRAFEN. In 2016 he founded Fünferfilm together with Frank Scheuffele. Most recently, he was selected for the high-profile Emerging Producers workshop 2021.
Producer's statement:
Mate Ugrin is certainly one of the most promising young talents in European cinema. In his award-winning short films (including the Heart of Sarajevo and renowned German First Steps Award), he has displayed a remarkable visual language and a distinct narrative economy that leaves an ambiguous image yet without lacking clarity nevertheless. We see great international potential for his promising debut PETTY THIEVES: The theme and motif of the film tell about the search for interpersonal connection and togetherness and are thus genuinely international. We expect to reach a cineastically open-minded audience that closely follows the festival line-up of the European A-festivals and goes to the cinema. We hope to attract cineastes and lovers of unusual narratives, who like to be challenged and at the same time appreciate the illusionism of the mainstream as small escapes from everyday life: an audience recognizing the true greatness and magic of cinema in sensual, cinematic experiments.
Where are we at?
Total estimated budget: 1.224.356,40 €
Finances pending: 1.134.356,40 €
Financing in place: 110.000 €
Production timeline
Development - May 2022 - September 2022
Financing - September 2022 - June 2023
Shooting - August/September 2023
Editing - Winter 2023/24
Premiere - Summer 2024
Production company profile
With its repertoire of artistic and author-driven feature films, documentaries and shorts, FÜNFERFILM has established itself as a company in both Hamburg and Germany. Our first feature film DRIFT by Helena Wittmann, celebrated its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2017, while our first feature length documentary OLANDA had its world premiere at the Forum of the Berlinale 2019. In January 2020, Karsten Krauses’ AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (2020) had its world premiere in Rotterdam. Helena Wittmann's 2nd feature HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH will have its premiere at Locarno Film Festival in main competition in 2022.
The art organisation KADROMAT was founded by a team of filmmakers, with the mission to produce audio-visual and multimedia works of uncompromising artistic expression. Its members act as both the filmmaking crew and the producers on projects. Kadromat's mission is to experiment and explore both film as an artform and film production as a practice, working transparently and fairly and focusing on creating the best working conditions for filmmakers and crew.