Story of the rise and fall of Dušan Vukotić, the only Yugoslav Oscar winner. When his film Ersatz (The Substitute) became the first non-American animated film to receive an Academy Award, Vukotić remained in Zagreb, unaware that he was making world animation history. The Oscar made him a prominent figure in cultural circles but also a target of envy among less talented colleagues.
Vukotić was known as a workaholic, fully devoted to his craft, supported by his wife, Lila Andres Vukotić, who gave up her acting career to stand by him. In the 1990s, with the formation of the new state, he suffered humiliation when he was banned from entering Zagreb Film, the studio where he had spent his entire life. That moment symbolically marked the change in his status.
Through this personal yet social portrait, the film guides us through the key socio-political events of that era, as well as the global significance of the cinematography of a small country like Yugoslavia, and how all of that gradually vanished into the ether as the country began to fall apart.