Migrations

The Isakovic brothers, Vuk and Arandjel, have left their native Serbia to escape the domination of the Ottoman Turks and seek their fortunes and a new home across the border in the Austrian Empire. Cold-shouldered in the Austrian dominions of Empress Maria Teresa, where Catholics look upon Orthodox Christians as strangers, they dream of a land of peace and plenty among the Slav peoples of Russia.Meanwhile, the fatalistic Vuk, committing his impressionable young wife Dafina to his brother's care, seeks advancement as officer in the Austrian army, and is sent of a fool's errand, leading his Slavonian-Danubian troops, to fight the French along the Rhine. Arandjel, the ever-optimistic, quick-witted and not over scrupulous merchant, looks to commerce with his tempting sister-in-law inevitably ends in tears. These three lost souls are at the center of this vast and beautifully detailed fresco in which Milos Tsernianski evokes the story of a whole people in search of a place to put down their roots.His tale is laid in the eighteenth century, but it show a pattern repeated right to the present day as the Serbs and their neighbors are condemned to fight for their own space in the face of encroachments from all sides, whether Fascist of Communist, Christian of Islamic, Migrations is therefore timely as it is timeless.