“As long as she isn’t one of them,” the director’s grandmother used to say. She meant that, as a Croat, he should be careful not to fall in love with a Serbian girl. This random comment from someone close to him, which the filmmaker found difficult to comprehend, was the inspiration for this ambitious cinematic project. Ivan and Jelena, Nataša and Ante, Luka and Marija – three decades, three stories in which he is a Croat and she comes from a Serbian family. 1991 – ethnic tensions are rising and the lovers want to escape to the calmer climate of Zagreb. 2001 – the same village, but now bearing the visible scars of war. Nataša keeps the trauma bottled up inside her, while her mother, in an attempt to move forward, hires a Croatian handyman called Ante. 2011 – Luka is a university student forced to return to his home village where he will inevitably run into the woman he left at a critical moment in their lives. Aided by Marko Brdar’s captivating lensing and using the same actors in each case (the outstanding Tihana Lazović and Goran Marković), Matanić tells three tales of fragile love in an environment beset by ethnic intolerance.