Synopsis

 It’s been nine years since a migrant family from Kosovo has settled in a small town in Croatia and opened up a bakery. Teenager Lina and her six-year-old brother Niti live above their bakery with their parents. They are constantly striving to secure a sense of belonging as Lina is battling with her own secret desire to leave town.
While trying to build a home and a business, frictions take place parallel to incidents on the ground floor. The arrival of a young baker named Drini creates a series of crises for the other Kosovar workers when he reports his cousin to the authorities for working without proper documentation, aiming to push the family out and take over the business.

Director’s Note

It has been a need and a commitment to turn all I was, all I heard and saw into something tangible and reflective. Being the first filmmaker in my family, coming from Has, the region of bakers, I feel a great responsibility to make this film. Lucky Us is a deeply personal narrative. I also immigrated to Croatia, my family owns a bakery. 
Time is of the essence for great stories, and Lucky Us demands that urgency now, when immigration is too often framed as an ending rather than a beginning. I am committed to following the truth, staying faithful to the places, the people, and the languages. 
Our story unfolds within a small bakery in Croatia, where an immigrant family navigates life alongside young Kosovar bakers fulfilling unexpected roles in this journey. It shares themes of tradition, family, and community within a specific place and time. The film is more than a family drama or coming-of-age story; it seeks originality by reimagining that genre. It deals with leaving behind rigid notions of good or bad within the complexity of survival and simply doing our best. Between childhood and adulthood, home and exile, Lucky Us will forever serve as a reflection of lives navigating identity, to bear the minimum effort of witnessing and remembering.

Short bio of Director

ANITA MORINA

Kosovar-Croatian director, writer & producer. After earning her Master’s in Film in Cambridge, she began working in the film industry, premiering her shorts SOS and One Woman Film in the same year & writing her debut feature Lucky Us. She runs her production company “Little House” since 2021 and is also developing Filmik Institue, an independent film hub in Kosovo.