The red shower.
In a small village on the Jura mountain lives an old lady. Her husband has passed away, it will have been a year on the 4rth of February. She sits in the kitchen all day long, too old to stand, to eat, to think really. She spend her days taking care a her tiny dog and talking to a picture in a frame, a picture of Budimir Popovic, her beloved but gone husband. In her most nostalgic moments, she tells him about the war. She asks questions never answered: “ How did it feel to know that the Great Tito himself was counting on you to deliver his messages? Is he the reason you became so cocky, Buda?”. Indeed, Budimir had been a soldier during the second world war and as Yugoslavia’s Reds was lead by Josip Broz Tito. Buda was only 12 when he started caring the gun and because his father had been the hand of the king before the royals left, it would have been great propaganda to see the young Budimir die for the resistance. Therefore, Buda was made Tito’s personal messenger.
When Budimir and Mila moved to Switzerland, Buda insisted on hanging a picture of Tito in the kitchen, but Mila refused without an explanation. He knew he was powerless in this matter, but stubborn as he was he simply switched the bathroom light bulb to a red one. Ever since, Mila showers in red light.
To many, this image would remind of the Holocaust, other might think of it sexually, but to them, it was a symbol of two wars: the one that had killed thousands and the one they held again one another as their way to say “I love you”.
