God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunija (Gospod postoi, imeto i' e Petrunija) is a 2019 Macedonian drama directed by Teona Strugar Mitevska.
Petrunija is a 32 year-old woman who is unemployed and lives at her parent's place in the city of Štip.
On every year on some holy day, the local priest throws a wooden cross from a bridge, and men dive into the river trying to grab it. The one who gets the cross would be very lucky for one year.
But that day, Petrunija dives too, and gets the cross. She also gets into trouble, because women are not supposed to to that and her running away with the cross is framed as stealing.
God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunija contains examples of the following tropes:
- Double Standard: Central theme to this film.
- I Have No Son!: Petrunija's mother threatens Petrunija with disowning her.
- Mommy Issues: Petrunija hates her mother who is incredibly conservative, patronizing and unsupportive. She has called her out, but her mother fails to acknowledge anything and leaves.
- Parental Betrayal: Petrunija's mother calls the police on her.
- Police Are Useless: while they sometimes do a few useful things, the police is quite incompetent and most of them are super prejudiced against women. Also they try to please the Church instead of applying the law.
- Reading Your Rights: Inverted as the police refuses to tell Petrunija anything about her legal status, avoid giving any justifications for her being kept at the police station ("You know why you're here"). One of the cops even tells her she watched too much television for thinking they would tell her about her rights.
- So Proud of You: Inverted. Petrunija won the big event, but her mother yells super harsh things at her.
- The Theocracy: A moderate example. The Church is shown to be extremely powerful, so much that it seems hard to apply the law when contrary to them.
- Torches and Pitchforks: An angry mob wants to punish the deviant woman who stole the holy cross.
