A Serbian Film

A Serbian Film
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Srđan Spasojević
Written by	Aleksandar Radivojević Srđan Spasojević
Produced by	Dragoljub Vojnov Srđan Spasojević
Starring	Sergej Trifunović Srđan Todorović
Cinematography	Nemanja Jovanov
Edited by	Darko Simić
Music by	Sky Wikluh
Production company	Contra Film
Distributed by	Invincible Pictures
Release date	June 11, 2010 (2010-06-11) (Serbia)
Running time	104 minutes (Original cut) 103 minutes (VOD/DVD edit) 99 minutes (Theatrical edit)
Country	Template:Film Serbia
Languages	Serbian English Swedish
Box office	€6,975 (Serbia)

A Serbian Film (Template:Lang-sr) is a 2010 Serbian horror film and the first feature film directed by Srđan Spasojević. It tells the story of a down-on-his-luck porn star who agrees to participate in an "art film", only to discover that he has been drafted into a snuff film with child rape and necrophilic themes. The film stars Serbian actors Srđan Todorović and Sergej Trifunović.

Upon its debut on the art film circuit, the film received substantial attention for its graphic depictions of rape, necrophilia, and pedophilia. The Serbian state prosecution opened an investigation to find out if the film violates the law. It is being investigated for elements of crime against sexual morals and crime related to the protection of minors. It was banned by a San Sebastián (Spain) court for "threatening sexual freedom" and thus could not be shown in the XXI Semana de Cine Fantástico y de Terror (21st Horror and Fantasy Film Festival) and banned in Norway after two months of sales due to violation of criminal law section 204a and 382 that deals with sexual representation of children and extreme violence.

The film was shown at an adults-only screening at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain during October 2010; as a result the festival's director Ángel Sara has been charged with exhibiting child pornography by the Spanish prosecutor who decided to take action in May 2011 after receiving a complaint from a Roman Catholic organization over a pair of scenes involving the rapes of a young child and a newborn.

Plot

Miloš is a semi-retired Serbian porn star with a beautiful wife, Marija and 6 yr old son, Petar. His brother Marko, a corrupt police officer who envies Miloš, is attracted to Marija, as well as to Miloš's former co-star, Lejla. The film opens with a sex scene which we soon discover is from a DVD of one of Miloš's old porn movies which is being watched at home by Petar who is puzzled and confused by what he has been watching his father do on screen. Petar's parents discover what he has been watching and Marija scolds Miloš for leaving the DVD's where Petar can find them. Seeking one last payday to secure his family's future, Miloš is intrigued when Lejla offers him to star in an art film being directed by Vukmir Vukmir, a well-connected, independent pornographer who wants to cast Miloš for his legendary ability to maintain a powerful erection. When Vukmir offers Miloš a large sum of money, Miloš reluctantly agrees, ambivalent towards Vukmir's insistence on keeping the film's details secret. At a meeting with Vukmir, Miloš passes an older bald-headed man with two large security guards, and regards them warily.

With filming begun, Miloš is taken to an orphanage where he is supplied an earpiece by Vukmir's driver, Raša, through which he is fed instructions by Vukmir. A film crew follows him around with cameras and puts him in various situations. Miloš sees a young girl, Jeca, who smiles back at him: her abusive mother, whose deceased husband was a Serbian hero of the Balkan War, has disgraced herself by becoming a whore. He is then led into a dark room where he is fellated by a nurse, and sees screens showing Jeca eating an ice lolly, and applying makeup. Later, he is instructed to receive oral sex with the abused mother while Jeca watches. Miloš becomes enraged by the involvement of Jeca and refuses to continue, but is grabbed from behind. The woman bites on his erection, forcing him to carry on. Miloš calls Marko, (who is himself being fellated as he takes the call), to check files on Vukmir. Marko later informs him that Vukmir is an educated psychologist, a children's TV producer, and has worked for state security. Later, Vukmir tries to explain his artistic style to a reluctant Miloš by showing him a film of Raša helping a woman give birth to a baby girl, but then proceeding to rape the newborn in what the director calls "a new genre - "newborn porn"". Miloš storms out to his car and drives away. At a road junction, he is approached and seduced by Vukmir's doctor, an attractive woman.

A bloodied Miloš suddenly wakes up in his bed days later, with no memory of what happened. He returns to the abandoned set and finds a number of tapes. Viewing them, Miloš discovers that he was fed a mixture of drugs to induce a perpetually aggressive, sexually aroused, and suggestible state. Under this influence and at Vukmir's insistence, Miloš brutally beats and rapes Jeca's mother handcuffed to a bed before decapitating her with a machete in order to induce rigor mortis. Another tape contains a scene in which a catatonic Miloš is sodomized by Vukmir's security. He then views Lejla questioning Vukmir and wanting to help Miloš, only to later be seen chained in the middle of a room with all of her teeth having been removed. A masked man enters the room, forces his erect penis down her throat and pinches her nose until she suffocates. Eventually, Miloš is led to Jeca's home where an elderly woman whom we presume is Jeca's paternal Grandmother praises him for killing the prostitute mother, and asks him to cement his masculine status by having sex with Jeca herself, calling it a "virgin communion", adding that she in turn had lost her own virginity to her own father. Despite Jeca's seeming willingness to have sex, and the drugs still flooding his system, Miloš refuses and escapes through a window. He finds out that he eventually ended up in an alleyway and watched a provocatively-dressed underaged girl walk by. Unable to stop himself masturbating at the sight of her, he was beaten by thugs who also accosted this passing girl, before they themselves were promptly killed by Raša, who then took him back to a warehouse with Vukmir.

At the warehouse, Miloš is drugged more heavily by the female doctor (Lena Bogdanović), but manages to stick an injection into her throat, immobilizing her. He is then taken into into a large room and made to have anal sex with two bodies hidden under covers on a bed. The masked man who killed Lejla enters and begins to have sex with the larger body beside the second one Miloš is raping. Vukmir removes the covers to reveal that the masked man is Marko, the body he is having sex with to be Marija, and Miloš's smaller body to be his own son Petar who is also drugged and by now bleeding profusely from his rectum. At this point Vukmir rejoices at the "coming together" (sic) of a Serbian family. The female doctor then enters having apparently, under the influence of the drug Miloš had injected into her throat, forced a drainpipe into her vagina as a dildo, before collapsing with blood pouring from her genitals. An enraged Miloš lunges at Vukmir and smashes his head against the floor causing a melee during which Marija attacks Marko and bludgeons him to death with a sculpture. Miloš wrestles a gun from a guard and kills all but the one-eyed Raša, who Miloš finishes by shoving his penis into his empty eye socket. A dying Vukmir praises Miloš' actions as truly worthy of film. Miloš then knocks out his wife and returns both her and his son at home before passing out, the events having come full circle.

Having remembered everything, Miloš contemplates suicide, but his wife stops him with a mutual understanding that he, his wife, and his child, should all commit suicide together. Miloš then cleans up and gathers his family in his bed, embracing, and using a pistol, fires a fatal shot through him, Petar, and Marija.

Sometime later, the bald-headed man from earlier, accompanied by actors and a film crew, enter the home. The director instructs the actors to begin the rape of the bodies, saying, "Start with the little one" (Petar).

Cast

• Srđan Todorović as Miloš
• Sergej Trifunović as Vukmir Vukmir
• Jelena Gavrilović as Marija
• Slobodan Beštić as Marko
• Katarina Žutić as Lejla
• Anđela Nenadović as Jeca
• Ana Sakić as Jeca's mother
• Lidija Pletl as Jeca's granny
• Lena Bogdanović as a doctor
• Luka Mijatović as Stefan
• Nenad Heraković as Keeper #1
• Carni Đerić as Keeper #2
• Miodrag Krčmarik as Raša
• Tanja Divnić as Kindergarten teacher
• Marina Savić as Prostitute #3
• Nataša Miljuš as Pregnant woman

Production

Srđan Spasojević co-wrote the screenplay with the assistance of Aleksandar Radivojević, a well-known Serbian horror film critic best known for his work on the script of the Serbian blockbuster Tears for Sale. A Serbian Film is a domestic film specifically made for foreign presentation, one of many such works of Dragoljub Vojnov.

The financing was raised through Contra Film, the Serbia-registered company specifically setup for that purpose. During the casting process there was concern on the filmmakers' part that first choices for the main protagonist roles - established main stream cinema stars in Serbia and other former Yugoslav countries Srđan Todorović and Sergej Trifunović - would shy away from the film due to its risque and extreme content, but it turned out to be unfounded as both accepted the parts immediately.

For budgetary reasons, the film was shot with Red One digital camera.

The post-production process of transferring the material to 35 mm film unexpectedly turned into battle against censorship. After striking a deal with Arri movie lab in Munich and after the lab already finished the 35 mm prints, the heads of the lab showed up, bringing along lawyers and German police officers while informing the filmmakers that the film prints will not be handed to them. The filmmakers then took their digital material over to Hungary where Budapest's Magyar Filmlab was willing to transfer it to 35 mm. In order to avoid the problems they experienced in Germany, this time the filmmakers even showed the movie beforehand to the lab management, which had no objections. However, when it came time to pick up the film prints, the filmmakers got a letter informing them that the prints will not be handed over "because the material broke Hungarian civil and family laws".

Faced with the incredible situation, the filmmakers came up with the strategy of dividing the phases of lab work between a couple of film labs around Europe. The process was finished only ten days before the scheduled premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

Release and censorship

Film festival circuit

The first-ever showing of A Serbian Film took place on March 15, 2010 at midnight in Austin as part of the 2010 South by Southwest. During the introduction by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's owner Tim League, the audience in the theater was once again warned about the extreme nature of the scenes they were about to see and given one last chance to leave the screening. The following day, the film played once more.

Next came the screening at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in April.

On June 11, 2010, the film screened in Serbia as part of the Cinema City festival in Novi Sad.

The film was run on July 16 and 19, 2010 during the Fantasia Festival in Montreal as part of the Subversive Serbia program.

The film was due to screen on August 29, 2010 at the Film Four FrightFest in London, UK but was pulled by the organizers following the intervention of Westminster Council. Films shown at this festival are usually shown pre-certificate but in this case Westminster Council refused to grant permission for its exhibition until it had been classified by the BBFC. Following its DVD submission to the BBFC (there were no theatrical materials available in the time frame requested for a proper theatrical classification), 49 cuts totaling four minutes and eleven seconds were requested for DVD certification. The UK distributor, Revolver Entertainment, initially looked into the possibilities of the process, but it became clear that the film would then have to be resubmitted to the BBFC and further cuts may then have been required. It was decided that to show a heavily edited version was not in the spirit of the festival and consequently its exhibition was pulled from the schedule. The film was replaced at the festival by Rodrigo Cortés' Buried starring Ryan Reynolds.

The Raindance Film Festival, that picked up the film at the Cannes Film Festival in May, subsequently held the UK premiere and 'found a way around the ban by billing the screening as a "private event"'. The Sun tabloid described the film as 'sick' and 'vile' following the festival's 2010 Press Launch and Westminster Council requested to monitor the invitations to the screening. The 35mm print was shipped from the BBFC for the 8 October 2010 premiere.

On October 21, 2010, the film had a single screening at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. It took place as part of the monthly event called Cinemacabre Movie Nights organized by the Rue Morgue magazine. The publication also spotlighted the film and featured it on its cover.

On November 26, 2010, the film was rated Refused Classification by the Australian Classification Board, banning sales and public showings of the film in Australia. However, on April 5, 2011, the Australian Classification Board approved a censored version of the film.

On July 12 and 16, 2011, the film was screened at FANTASPOA in Porto Alegre, Brazil and at least at one other film festival in the country, before being banned just before a screening in Rio de Janeiro. Initially the ban applied only in Rio, but afterwards the decision became valid throughout the country, pending further judgement of the film.

On March 2011, A Serbian Film won the Special Jury Prize in the 31st edition of Fantasporto, Portugal's biggest film festival, in Porto.

General theatrical release

On September 24, 2010, A Serbian Film was released uncensored (103 minutes) in Serbian theaters, with screening times scheduled late at night.

The film had a limited release in UK theaters on December 10, 2010 in the edited form (99 minutes), with 00:04:11 of its original content removed by the British Board of Film Classification due to "elements of sexual violence that tend to eroticize or endorse sexual violence". A Serbian Film thus became the most censored cinema release in Britain since the 1994 Indian film Nammavar that had five minutes and eight seconds of its violent content removed.

The film had a limited release in the United States on May 6, 2011, edited to 98 minutes with an NC-17 rating. It was also released on VOD at the website FlixFling on the same day, except only slightly edited to 103 minutes.

Home media

The film's North American DVD and Blu-ray Disc release has been set for October 25, 2011 through Invincible Pictures. Netflix has refused to carry the film as well as wholesale outlets Ingram and VPD. It is available on demand at FlixFling.com.

Ban

The film is banned in Spain and Germany. The film was banned for distribution in Norway and is temporarily banned for screening in Brazil. This was the first time a movie was banned in Brazil since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. The last banned film had been Je vous salue, Marie in 1986.

The film was refused classification and effectively banned days before its release date in South Australia.

Before its banning in Australia, major Australian DVD retailer JB Hi-Fi announced that they would not be distributing the film, either online or in physical stores. They attributed the "Disturbing content of the film" and a disagreement with the then R-rating to their subsequent ban. However, the film was evidently available for a time.

On 19 September 2011, the Australian Classification Review Board again rated the film Refused Classification, effectively banning the film from distribution Australia-wide. According to the Review Board, "A Serbian Film could not be accommodated within the R18+ classification as the level of depictions of sexual violence, themes of incest and depictions of child sexual abuse in the film has an impact which is very high and not justified by context."

In September of 2011 Netflix removed the film from their list of titles available for viewing and from their in-site search results without any official explanation.

Interpretation

The director and writer, Srđan Spasojević and Aleksandar Radivojević, have made statements to the effect that their creation is a parody of modern politically correct films made in Serbia which are financially supported by foreign funds.

On the question, why 'Srpski Film' for the title, Radivojević answers: "Srpski Film is also a metaphor for our national cinema - boring , predictable and altogether unintentionally hilarious which throughout our film to some extent is commented on and subtly parodied". Similarly, Radivojević describes Serbian cinema as "...pathetic state financed films made by people who have no sense or connection to film, but are strongly supported by foreign funds. Quality of the film is not their concern, only the bureaucratic upholding of the rule book on political correctness".

In another interview Spasojević is quoted as saying "my shocking 'A Serbian Film' exposes the fascism of political correctness". On the question of whether the violence depicted deals with Serbian soldiers and war crimes that they have committed, Spasojević answers: "'Srpski Film' does not touch upon war themes, but in a metaphorical way deals with the consequences of postwar society and a man that is exploited to the extreme in the name of securing the survival of his family".

"As much as we try to deal with our life in this film allegorically, and with the corrupt political authorities that govern it, we are also dealing with today’s Art and Cinema and the corrupt artistic authorities that govern them in a similar manner here. The films that preach and enforce political correctness are the dominant form of cinematic expression today. Nowadays in Eastern Europe you cannot get a film financed unless you have a pathetic and heartwarming ‘true story’ to tell about some poor lost refugee girls with matchsticks, who ended up as victims of war, famine and/or intolerance. They mostly deal with VICTIMS as heroes, and they use and manipulate them in order to activate the viewer’s empathy. They make a false, romanticized story about that victim and sell it as real life. That is real pornography and manipulation, and also spiritual violence – the cinematic fascism of political correctness".

Spasojević and Radivojević also express that the film is not exclusively dealing with Serbian issues but issues in the "New World" in general. "We didn’t want to make a hermetic picture that would deal exclusively with our local tragedies, but to tell a story with global overtones, because Serbia is merely a reflection of the ways of today’s New World in general, as it tries to imitate it and fails miserably. Contrary to the peerless politically correct facade of the New World, it’s still a soulless devouring machine for killing every small freedom – of art and free speech – we have left, destroying everything different in its path".

Reception

The film was released to great controversy in terms of its graphic and often sexually explicit violence. Spasojević has responded to the controversy with "This is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government... It's about the monolithic power of leaders who hypnotize you to do things you don't want to do. You have to feel the violence to know what it's about."

Serbia

Blic's Milan Vlajčić penned a middle-of-the-road review, praising the direction, technical aspects, "effective iconography", and "video game pacing" while saying that the film was taken to the edges of self-parody.

Web magazine Popboks gave the film a very affirmative review.

Serbian actor and film director Dragan Bjelogrlić criticized the film in one of his interviews: "Shallow and plain wrong - sum up my feelings about this movie. I have a problem with A Serbian Film. Its director in particular. I've got a serious problem with the boy whose father got wealthy during the 1990s - nothing against making money, but I know how money was made in Serbia during the 1990s - pays for his son's education abroad and then the kid comes back to Serbia to film his view of the country using his dad's money and even calls the whole thing A Serbian Film. To me that's a metaphor for something unacceptable. Using the money robbed from the people, the second generation continues smearing the people as the worst in the world. You know, when the first generation of the Rockefellers finished robbing, the second one built museums, galleries, charitable organizations, and financed America. But in Serbia we're seeing every segment of society continually being taken apart and for me this movie is a paradigm of that. I've never met this kid and I really don't want to since that meeting wouldn't be pleasant at all".

United States

The film received mixed to negative reviews. Based on 22 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 41% of critics gave A Serbian Film a positive review, with an average rating of 4.9/10.

A. O. Scott of the New York Times wrote in his review, "At first glance – and few are likely to dare a second – it belongs in the high-concept shock-horror tradition whose most recent and notorious specimen is probably The Human Centipede. As is often the case with movies like this, A Serbian Film revels in its sheer inventive awfulness and dares the viewer to find a more serious layer of meaning."

Karina Longworth of the Village Voice penned a very negative review, calling the film "a passionate argument against a no-holds-barred exploration of extreme human sexuality and violence" and referring to the film's supposed commentary on the sad state of post-Milošević Serbian society as "specious lip service". She concludes: "That this film exists at all is a more cogent commentary on the nation's collective trauma than any of the direct statements or potential metaphors contained within".

Scott Weinberg wrote "I think the film is tragic, sickening, disturbing, twisted, absurd, infuriated, and actually quite intelligent. There are those who will be unable (or unwilling) to decipher even the most basic of 'messages' buried within A Serbian Film, but I believe it's one of the most legitimately fascinating films I've ever seen. I admire and detest it at the same time. And I will never watch it again. Ever."

A more critical review came from Alison Willmore: "Movies can use transgressive topics and imagery toward great artistic resonance. They can also just use them for pure shock/novelty/boundary-pushing, which is where I'd group Serbian Film. That it comes from a country that's spent decades deep in violent conflict, civil unrest, corruption and ethnic tensions makes it tempting to read more into the film than I think it actually offers – ultimately, it has as much to say about its country of origin as Hostel does about America, which is a little, but nothing on the scale its title suggests."

Tim Anderson of horror review site Bloody Disgusting likened the film to "having [his] soul raped" and dissuaded anyone reading his review from ever seeing it, writing: "If what I have written here is enough to turn your feelings of wonder into a burning desire to watch this monstrosity, then perhaps I haven't been clear enough. You don't want to see Serbian Film. You just think you do."

Harry Knowles from Ain't It Cool News lists it in his Top 10 films of 2010, stating "This is a fantastic, brilliant film – that given time, will eventually outgrow the absurd reactions of people that think it is a far harder film than it actually is." "The film is an incredibly great film, where everything feels correct in the context of the film. It is never exploitive."

Time Out New York's Joshua Rothkopf was very critical. He accuses A Serbian Film of pandering to "mouth-breathing gorehounds who found Hostel a bit too soft (i.e., fanatics who would hijack the horror genre into extremity because deeper thinking is too hard)" before concluding that "the movie says as much about Eastern Europe as Twilight does about the Pacific Northwest".

United Kingdom

In his very negative review of A Serbian Film, BBC Radio 5 Live's Mark Kermode called it a "nasty piece of exploitation trash in the mold of Jörg Buttgereit and Ruggero Deodato", going on to add that "if it is somehow an allegory of Serbian family and Serbian politics then the allegory gets lost amidst the increasingly stupid splatter". Furthermore, he mentioned A Serbian Film again in his review of Fred: The Movie, pairing the two as his least favorite viewing experiences of the year.

See also

• List of banned films

External links

• Official website (Serbia)
• Official website (US)
• A Serbian Film at IMDb
• ‹The template AllMovie title is being considered for deletion.› A Serbian Film at AllMovie
• A Serbian Film at Rotten Tomatoes
• Invincible Pictures (North American distributor)