I WANT TO LIVE...

Dawn. The silhouettes of a group of young men, motionless, the blades of their propped-up scythes next to their heads. The death symbolism is deliberate – for a long time, they were drug addicts who lived with the permanent threat of a fatal overdose. Now they live in the “Belmeken” rural commune, and are trying to win back their human dignity and come to terms with the mental and fi nancial damage they know they infl icted on their loved-ones. The commune has an open-door policy: Anybody who consider themselves cured can go. Those who choose to stay know that time is the main factor in their struggle with addiction. For more than a year, the men steer clear of anything that might be seen as a substitute narcotic: big cities, friends and family, cigarettes, music, religion. Step by step, they learn to reduce life to the necessities, and to live a self-suffi cient life in harmony with nature and the other commune-dwellers. In short, they learn to accept responsibility. All that counts to addicts is personal survival and the here-and-now, whereas communal life demands that they think ahead for the collective good. NAŠITE DEZA… captures emotions, hope, guilt, loneliness. Building on its protagonists’ narratives, the fi lm portrays in muted colours a group of people who have been to hell and back, and see the commune as their only chance of salvation. When the monologues pause for an instant, the faces continue to tell the story. Eyes look into the camera: young, insecure, compliant. And tentatively optimistic that one day they will be able to get on with themselves and with life