Ena Begović

Ena Begović, the celebrated Croatian actress, had a life worthy of a Greek tragedy, and the photographs I took of her during the shooting of Lordan Zafranović’s “The Fall of Italy” (1980) bear witness to a paradox — how photographs can testify forever to a life that lasted such a short time. We were on the island of Šolta, both of us still students; it was her first leading role, and I was the assistant director, my first professional job.

The portraits of Ena I took then were among the first of my career. Afterwards she became a megastar of Yugoslav and Croatian cinema. We met again on several occasions over the years, and then one newspaper headline described her departure from this world better than anything else could: “Killed in a road accident at the happiest moment of her life”. She had set off for a summer holiday on Brač with her newborn daughter and her mother. The car went over a cliff, and Ena was the only one who did not survive.

I found the Šolta photographs again in the attic of my house, among forgotten but precious odds and ends, for an exhibition held in Pula in 2023, during the 70th anniversary edition of the Pula Film Festival. That was the first time they were ever published. Through those photographs, Ena’s beauty and charisma captivated the public all over again.