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Romance has long been a socially accepted way to cope with the precarity of life and the prospect of death. Crackling chemistry has a way of helping us project ourselves into a future unknown, while fuzzy warm memories stave off the inevitability of our own demise. Miroslav Mandić’s tender-hearted “Sanremo” places us squarely in a place where such leaps, both backward and forward, are all but impossible: a nursing home. Specifically, one where two of its inhabitants suffer from dementia, making their every interaction an opportunity to rekindle the romance neither can remember having embarked on.

Bruno (Sandi Pavlin) spends his days worrying about his dog. He’s always eager to leave the nursing home behind and return to the house he kept for years with his wife to feed his beloved canine companion. He’s gently reminded that his home is no longer his. Or rather, that his...

How does a filmmaker meet the challenges of depicting and dramatizing the complex and emotionally wrought condition of dementia? Slovenia-based, Bosnia-born writer-director Miroslav Mandić answered the challenge with Sanremo, which focuses on an elderly man named Bruno (Sandi Pavlin) living in a home for the elderly. Despite his increasing dementia, Bruno is capable of love and connection, which he finds with Duša (Silva Čušin), who is creating a collage art piece as part of her therapy. The pair’s strongest connection proves to be a pretty 1960s-era Italian tune, “Non ho l’età,” which Bruno first heard in the massively popular Sanremo music ...

How does a filmmaker meet the challenges of depicting and dramatizing the complex and emotionally wrought condition of dementia? Slovenia-based, Bosnia-born writer-director Miroslav Mandić answered the challenge with Sanremo, which focuses on an elderly man named Bruno (Sandi Pavlin) living in a home for the elderly. Despite his increasing dementia, Bruno is capable of love and connection, which he finds with Duša (Silva Čušin), who is creating a collage art piece as part of her therapy. The pair’s strongest connection proves to be a pretty 1960s-era Italian tune, “Non ho l’età,” which Bruno first heard in the massively popular Sanremo music ...