Renata Lučić, both director and protagonist, returns to her hometown to visit her father in a small village in the Croatian part of Slavonia, near the Bosnian border. She has always hated the rural area on the banks of the river Sava, “those endless meadows and gardens,” as she reveals right in the opening sequence. Even as a child she knew that she would leave. Like her older brother, like her mother. And like 124,667 other women who “went West” after the war, usually to Germany or Austria, to work – and never to return.
She now hangs out in the almost abandoned and womanless village with her estranged father Tomislav and his best friend Joso. The men follow their routines, working in the forest or eating river fish they caught themselves. Emotional closeness and intimacy gradually form in at first seemingly trivial conversations and despite initial misunderstandings and distinctly different world views. The film project, which started as the story of an emigration, gradually turns into a sensitive study of loneliness, human relationships, friendship and love; about the beauty of the little things that leads to larger insights – not just for Renata.

“Y” sensually draws the progress of a same-sex relationship from playful beginning to turbulent end. Charcoal strokes become the language in which the filmmaker tells us of the process of growing closer to and away from each other, of intimacy and estrangement. A shared chapter of life is sketched, corrected and discarded.

But the line also explores the female body. The tip of the charcoal wanders through curves, hills and valleys, circling soft flanks like a finger and gently stroking breasts and hips. In the darkness of the cinema, the eye is free to glide along the emerging and disappearing shapes. We become part of an erotic triangle and are given an intimate insight into the protean psychological and physical aspects of this partnership.