God Will Not Help

After the success of her feature debut Quit Staring at My Plate (2016) which had a long and fruitful festival tour, the Croatian filmmaker Hana Jušić needed nine years to finish her sophomore feature. Meanwhile, she worked as a writer for two successful TV series, the award-winning The Last Socialist Artefact and the Croatian version of the groundbreaking Norwegian series SKAM.

The plot is set in rural Inner Dalmatia in today’s Croatia at the beginning of the 20th century. A Chilean woman Teresa (Manuela Martelli, who is also a filmmaker best known for the period thriller 1976) comes to the region claiming that she is the widow of the member of a shepherd clan who emigrated to South America and died there in a work-related accident. Her appearance brings unease to the community, as the family of the late Marko Mitrović (Bogdan Farcas, in flashbacks) wonders what her intentions might be, as she looks and acts differently, even strange by the standards of the backward patriarchal community. The fact that she does not speak the local language and the rest do not speak any foreign languages does not help.

For some, like Marko’s sister Milena (Ana Marija Veselčić, glimpsed in Pelican), Teresa offers a view into the wide world beyond the borders of what she only knows: the village and the mountain above it. The new family patriarch and a failed priest Ilija (Serbian actor Filip Đurić) sees her as a potential sister in Christ and a love interest. The younger brother Nikola (Mauro Ercegović Gracin, in his second screen role after Carbide) sees her as an opportunity to get married and inherit his late brother’s part of the flock and land. The more distant uncles Stanko (Nikša Butijer who collaborated with Hana Jušić on her debut as well) and Krste (Ivan Skoko) see her as an intruder, a witch and a threat to the clan’s inheritance, unity and wellbeing.

The plot moves at sluggish pace, as the filmmaker and the editor Jan Klemsche maximise the atmosphere and the feelings of unease and mystery around Teresa, her true self and her intentions, thus making God Will Not Help an extremely unnerving viewing experience. It certainly is a deliberate choice, as Jušić definitely does not aim for a spectacle, although she channels the feeling of the authentic period piece. Nevertheless, she rewards the viewers by pulling the actors’ bravura perforamnces to the spotlight, elevated by the fact that they have to communicate with limited means to the stranger. The contrast between the dimly lit interiors, the luscious, western-like vistas and the disturbing illustrations, flashbacks and visions verging on horror in the cinematography by Jana Plećaš and the out-of-place and out-of-time neoclassical electronica score by the trio of Greek composers channelling the works of Vangelis don’t hurt either.

As the cinematic poetics Jušićalready demonstrated with her award-winning shorts, the atmosphere of doom and gloom is used to make a point. The filmmaker does so from the off with the title, since no higher power cannot resolve the affairs between humans. But on the margins of that she also makes several other points, such as people being able to sense one another and to communicate despite the language barrier, the perils of patriarchy and the rule of traditions and the individual baggage of past traumas that has to be carried at any price and that does not get lighter with time.

The fact is that she could have done it all with a less repetitious script and with less time-stretching in the execution to the same effect. But nevertheless, God Will Not Help –- which premiered in Locarno's main competition before heading to Sarajevo – leaves a lasting impression.

Reviewed on: 08 Aug 2025