A young woman, a born swimmer, backstrokes her way across the Adriatic Sea under a blinding sun in the opening images of “Murina,” now playing in limited theatrical release.
We don’t yet know her circumstances, where she’s from, what kind of life she lives. But by the time director and co-writer Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic returns to these images, we know why the swimmer carves the water like someone tasting real freedom, perhaps for the first time in her 17 thwarted years.
“Murina” is the eye-filling debut feature from the Croatian-born filmmaker now based in New York. The film tells a simple, beat-by-beat story of this teenager, Julija, played by Gracija Filipovic, and a life defined by the Dalmatian region coastline: craggy, forbidding, with cliffs ideal for jumping.
