Anela leaves Serbia for a nursing job in Hamburg to support her brother Silan and their ill mother. As she finds freedom and love with a girl, Silan drifts into a criminal hooligan group. The siblings grow apart – until Silan forces Anela back home.

On the roof of their Belgrade apartment, siblings ANELA (24) and SILAN (18) drink beer, laugh, and play cards, escaping their daily burdens. Anela works overtime as a nurse to support their mother VERA (49), diagnosed with MS, while Silan pursues his dream of becoming an artist and applies to art university. When a letter arrives about their father’s outstanding apartment debt, the siblings must decide. Anela takes a nursing job in Hamburg—the only way to raise the money within a year, as Silan promises to care for their mother.

In Hamburg, Anela discovers freedom and falls in love with FLO (25), experiencing a life she never had at home. Back in Belgrade, Silan struggles with household duties, his mother’s complaints, and frustration over the art academy. Stuck at home while his sister lives the future he is denied, he turns to his old school friend Boris and is drawn into a far-right hooligan group. The siblings drift apart.

When Anela skips a visit, Silan’s fear of abandonment turns into obsession. Overnight he drives to Hamburg, tricks Anela into returning to Belgrade, where the apartment is in chaos and Silan immersed in criminal circles. Flo reminds Anela that she deserves happiness. During a confrontation with masked attackers, Anela realizes Silan is among them. Shocked, she fights back but spares him. Before returning to Hamburg, she finds the acceptance letter for Silan. On the roof, she leaves him an envelope, showing her support—he alone must choose his future.

The director and scriptwriter Tamara Denić was born in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and fled to Germany with her parents in 1993 to escape the war. In 2016, Tamara completed her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Multimedia with a minor in Media Informatics at the LMU in Munich with an interactive, experimental short film. Then she moved to Berlin and worked as a dubbing recording supervisor, film production and editorial assistant and video editor, among other things. Along the way, Tamara played in independent theater groups and experimented with video performances and vjing. However, she soon focused on narrative short film projects.

In 2022, she completed her master’s degree in film directing at the Hamburg Media School on a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Her short film GET HOME SAFE (13 min.) has already been shown at over fifty festivals worldwide and received numerous awards, including the Engelke Short Film Award at the 32nd International Film Festival Emden-Norderney. Her graduation film ISTINA (Truth, 29 min.) was a BAFTA finalist in 2023 and has received 27 awards worldwide so far, among them the Audience Award Medium Length Film at the 44th Max Ophüls Film Festival, and a Student Oscar at the 50th Student Academy Awards.

Tamara is currently developing her debut feature film “”Anela & Silan”” together with the production company Weydemann Bros.

Weydemann Bros. produces films and series for the German and international market. We are guided by the vision of an equally political and entertaining filmic story-telling. For us, film is always a critical observation of the times and the world in which we live. Our goal is to make many people laugh and cry with our films and to make them reflect. We develop projects together with authors and directors and build long-term creative partnerships.

Films by Weydemann Bros. have won way over 100 prizes, among them 10 German Film Awards, a Berlinale Silver Bear, an Un Certain Regard Award, a Grand Prix by the Critics Week in Cannes, a Leopard in Locarno and a European Film Award. The films have been selected as official entry to the Oscars Best Foreign Language Film and were screened on international film festivals worldwide. 2019 Weydemann Bros. was awarded as one of Variety’s „10 producers to watch“ at the Cannes film festival, won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Producers in 2020 and the Hamburg film festival Best Producers Award in 2021.

“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” (2025, 104 min)
*Cannes Un Certain Regard 2025, Main Award Un Certain Regard

“The Freshly Cut Grass” (2024, 112 min)
*Tribeca 2024 – best screenplay, *San Sebastian 2024

“The Outrun” (2024, 118 min)
*Sundance 2024, *Berlinale 2024, *Edinburgh 2024 *Nom. for 9 BIFA Awards and 2 Bafta Awards

“Silence of the Seashell” (2024, 117 min)
*Shanghai Int. Film Festival 2024