A Film Epitaph for the Days When Newspapers Sold Millions and Reading Was Like Breathing

“Vjesnik: The Last Edition” arrives as an epitaph for a newspaper culture that once reached almost everyone. Dražen Klarić’s documentary, produced by Petra Balija, recalls a time when newspapers sold in the millions and reading formed part of daily life across Croatia and the former Yugoslavia.

The film follows Vjesnik as it faced the arrival of market competition in journalism. The newspaper, the review says, appeared unprepared for the change in the system. Its story becomes a way to trace broader and rapid social shifts that took place before the information-technology revolution transformed the media landscape.

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Reading was then part of life, like breathing or eating.

For many people of the reviewer’s generation, Vjesnik was more than a publication. Journalists often worked for one of its many editions, while readers encountered titles such as Start, Danas, Vjesnik and Večernjak in villages, cities, offices, factories, restaurants and bakeries. Reading was not a fashion or a status marker. It was treated as an ordinary part of life, like breathing or eating.

The film’s premiere at the 8th Rab Film Festival drew a full audience to Rab’s Pjaceta. The 50-minute screening felt brief to viewers, who watched with the same absorbed attention that once accompanied reading a newspaper. The documentary also recalls that strong newspapers could unsettle, expose and frighten people who feared what publication might reveal. Alongside nostalgia, it presents a cross-section of the period’s politics, culture and society, including a more relaxed side of everyday life despite a politically far more closed environment.

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A journalistic report does not make anyone a presenter.