Vjeko is a quinquagenarian Croatian teacher ostracised and ridiculed because of his homosexuality. One night, as he’s walking the streets of Zagreb as Katarina, he is attacked by a pack of hateful wingnuts and is taken to A&E, where he is welcomed by his neighbour Maja. She will help him recover from the beating over the following days and replace him as a carer for his father, who is laid up in bed after having endured an above-the-knee amputation to both legs. As a thank-you, Vjeko agrees to read the Croatian constitution to her dyslexic husband Ante, who needs to pass an exam in order to keep his job as a police officer.
The Constitution is a whistleblowing film that touches on a series of social, political and ethnic issues still unresolved in the former Yugoslav territories. Addressing a delicate topic such as brutality towards minorities could have easily resulted in a mawkish film aimed at stirring the audience to tears, but writer-director Grlić has succeeded in portraying a slice of Croatian society without it resulting in a pedantic and didactic finished product. The movie won the Grand Prize of the Americas for Best Film in the World Competition section of the 40th Montreal World Film Festival in 2016.
