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‘Through the Graves the Wind is Blowing’ Review: Travis Wilkerson’s Playful, Political Essay Set in Split, Croatia

Several murders in Split, Croatia form the pretext for a spirited, mercurial essay doc in Travis Wilkerson's 'Through the Graves the Wind is Blowing'

Wilkerson starts by introducing local homicide detective Ivan Peric, a character who could have walked straight out of a deconstructed neo-noir: a hangdog Sam Spade as written by Paul Auster channeling Franz Kafka. It’s an association Wilkerson finds written across the city today in horribly prevalent swastika and Ustaše-symbol graffiti, deeply knitted into the local football scene and given its most awful expression further inland at the Jasenovac concentration camp, which had the grim distinction of being the largest such European extermination factory not to have been built by the Germans. The irreverent, intimate voiceover is one way he saps the potential pretension or self-seriousness out of this dynamically entertaining film, but he also achieves a lovely conspiracy with the viewer by showing his work, its rough edges, its errata and false starts.

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