Croatia’s Wild River Landscape At the banks of Sava River

Director: Heribert Schöller
Production Country: Germany
Production Year։  2015
Duration։ 52 mins

SYNOPSIS

The Sava floodplains are an ethnic, almost disappeared, landscape in Europe, at which people still live with and of ‘their‘ river in the same way as their ancestors did.
Once built out of burly oaks from the riparian forests, the old slavic wooden houses are typical for the Posavina region. Some of those houses are more than 500 years old. For a living, the people of the region grow crops and keep their horses, cattle and pigs in the surrounding meadowy countryside. And these are unique animals, such as the Posaviner horse. No other horse species adapted to the moist habitat as remarkably as this small cart horse, which can be found nowhere else. The Turopoljer pig with its characteristic fur, and probably the oldest domesticated pig in Europe, can also be found in the Sava floodplains.These sturdy animals adapted to life in the wild, being outside through all seasons as in medieval times and adjusted their diet to acrons. Consequently, they are of great importance to the region’s nature. When digging and wallowing they keep large mudflats clear, in which precious plants, such as water clover and the fringed water-lily, may thrive then.

Thousands of fire-bellied toads and pool frogs, as well as wild carps from the Sava spawn in the swales. The mostly woodless floodplains are also the most important foraging grounds of endangered large bird species. All together they coexist peacefully with humans. Each river inhabitant here has its place and makes a living.

The movie is a story about a river, a unique river in Europe – and about people who, in today’s Europe, have a unique way of life in accordance with their river. Although this story about the Sava and its inhabitants might be of a past century, yet it is state-of-the-art. Because compared to other European cities and regions, which experience and get devastated by floods frequently, this particular river does not menace the people, who learnt to live with the river.