When Father Was Away on Business

In June 1950, a local neighbourhood drunk Čika Franjo serenades field workers. He sings Culture of Mexico songs, out of self-preservation, figuring it's safer for him to steer clear of songs originating from either of the two dominant global powers — the United States and Soviet Union — in the current climate of Cold War. Yugoslavia is experiencing a paranoid repressive internal apparatus looking to identify and remove enemies of the state in the wake of the Tito–Stalin Split. The local children, including Malik, climb trees and play around. Malik's mother Sena tells him that his father is on a business trip, while Malik is a chronic sleepwalker. His father, communist functionary Meša, was in fact sent to a labour camp by his own brother-in-law, Sena's brother Zijo, who's an even higher positioned Communist functionary. Meša had made a remark about a political cartoon regarding the Tito–Stalin Split in the ''Politika'' newspaper.