Film Review: Sretno dijete (The Happy Child, 2003)
There exists a pervasive human tendency to view the past, particularly the more distant past, through rose-tinted glasses. Almost any place and any period can become the subject of explicitly nostalgic treatment in arts, literature, and cinema. This process, however, becomes fraught with complexity when applied to Yugoslavia. The deep ethnic, political, and ideological divisions exposed and exacerbated by its bloody dissolution in the 1990s make any straightforward elegy for a shared past inherently problematic. One of the earliest and most poignant attempts to go through this minefield of memory is Igor Mirković’s 2003 Croatian documentary film, Sretno dijete (The Happy Child). The film is a work of explicit, unapologetic nostalgia, yet it is one underpinned by a profound awareness of the ironic, tragicomic gulf between that remembered past and the subsequent historical reality.
The film’s subject is the Yugoslav New Wave (Novi val) music scene that flourished in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The title itself is a direct reference to the song “Sretno dijete” by Prljavo kazalište, a pioneering Croatian punk band whose eponymous 1979 debut album serves as a touchstone. Mirković’s focus extends beyond this single group to chart the concurrent rise of a constellation of bands that, despite stylistic differences from punk to ska to art-rock, collectively defined a generational moment. This includes Zagreb’s Azra, Film, and Haustor; Belgrade’s Električni orgazam and VIS Idoli; and Ljubljana’s Buldožer and Pankrti. The film posits, with considerable justification, that this period represented a creative zenith in Yugoslav popular music, where critical acclaim and widespread popularity converged in a way that was both authentically local and seamlessly attuned to broader Western trends.
Mirković’s methodology is the film’s defining and most controversial characteristic. He explicitly discards any pretence of “cold” objectivity. A self-professed fan of the music, he structures the documentary not as a dispassionate historical survey but as a personal, almost essayistic, journey. Alongside the traditional documentary elements—archival footage and contemporary interviews with musicians, journalists, and artists like the iconic album cover designer Mirko Ilić—Mirković inserts himself directly into the narrative. His autobiographical reminiscences, narrated in a wistful, reflective tone, serve a dual purpose. Firstly, they authenticate the film’s emotional core; this is not just history, but lived experience. Secondly, and more importantly, they provide a crucial, albeit impressionistic, socio-economic and political context. We see the era through the eyes of a teenage fan in Zagreb, for whom these bands were not merely entertainment but the soundtrack to a specific form of urban, Yugoslav modernity.
This context is vital to understanding the film’s central thesis. Yugoslavia under Tito was, of course, a Communist state, but its non-aligned status and relative openness to the West created a unique cultural space. Foreign records, styles, and attitudes permeated the country with relative ease. As the film illustrates through both interview clips and lyrical analysis, the regime exhibited a surprising, calculated tolerance towards the New Wave movement. The rebellious, often sarcastically anti-establishment lyrics of these bands were largely permitted, even occasionally promoted through official youth channels. The state apparatus seemingly viewed rock music, and the New Wave in particular, as a useful “safety valve” for youthful energy—a modern, urban, and crucially, multi-ethnic counterweight to the rural, nationalist traditions that simmered beneath the surface of federal unity. The irony that this state-sanctioned “youth culture” was often openly mocking that very state is not lost on Mirković; it forms a key part of the film’s tragicomic texture.
Mirković, a former Croatian state television reporter who had collaborated with the esteemed director Rajko Grlić on 2000 political documentary Novo, novo vrijeme, brings a polished technical skill to this personal project. The editing is dynamic, interweaving grainy concert footage, evocative period montages, and contemporary talking heads with a rhythmic precision that mirrors the music itself. The film serves as an exceptionally well-crafted and emotionally resonant summary of the phenomenon. The passage of two and a half decades, and the existence of several new nation-states born from Yugoslavia’s ashes, provided Mirković with a perspective that is both elegiac and clear-eyed. The nostalgia is palpable, but it is forever shadowed by the knowledge of what came after—the wars that made the optimistic, pan-Yugoslav spirit of these songs seem, in retrospect, like a beautiful, naive dream.
Ultimately, this is both the film’s great strength and its primary limitation. Sretno dijete is unlikely to resonate with viewers who lack any prior familiarity or emotional connection to its subject. For the uninitiated, it may feel like an insider’s meticulously assembled scrapbook. However, for those who lived through that era, or who have since discovered its music, the film functions as something far more powerful: a deeply moving act of cultural archaeology. It successfully captures the specific energy of a time when artistic rebellion and social optimism briefly converged. In this sense, it serves as a perfect companion piece to another cult classic from the period, 1981’s Dečko koji obećava (Promising Boy), which featured many of the same bands and embodied the same spirit. Mirković’s film does not merely document a music scene; it elegises a lost worldview, and in doing so, offers a poignant, critical reflection on the very nature of nostalgia in a post-Yugoslav context.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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