Croatia's official submission for the 2004 Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film, THE LONG DARK NIGHT is an emotional portrait of an entire country caught in the devastation of WWII, and the consequences brought onto one small village of Croatians of German ethnic background during the 1940's – 1950’s. Iva (Goran Visnjić), a college student devoted to his family and friends, finds himself forced to fight with the communist partisans when war erupts and his best friend, Mata, ends up fighting on the opposite side with the Nazi-allied Ustasha. The path of these two former friends – both troubled by their respective choices – mirrors the complex and difficult transformation of Croatia during that time.