The year is 37 BC. A young Liburnian Volsus is taken by a Roman unit to help in what at first seems a simple task of collecting taxes, but the encounters with local Illyrian tribes soon lead to unexpected turns of events, as they show more resilience to subjugation than meets the eye. We see their archaic, emotional world of quaint and brutal laws and traditions through the eyes of this youngster, regarded by the Romans as a primitive barbarian, and gradually come to understand that their world is not all that different from our own.
Direction
Bogojević-Narath builds dread through landscape, not dialogue.
Production
Authentic Illyrian details—this isn't your polished HBO Rome.
Acting
Križan's silent transformation from pawn to witness.
Director
Simon Bogojević-Narath
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot in Croatia with local historians, the film uses reconstructed Illyrian language—no Hollywood Latin here. It's one of the few cinematic representations of pre-Roman Balkan peoples told from their perspective.
The tax collection premise mirrors modern extraction economics—Bogojević-Narath has called it 'a Western where the natives win, but winning looks like survival, not triumph.' That bleak final shot? Pure intention.
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