A Serbian Film

This article is about low-budget debut. For an overview of Serbian cinematography, see Cinema of Serbia.

A Serbian Film
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Srđan Spasojević
Produced by	Dragoljub Vojnov Srđan Spasojević
Written by	Aleksandar Radivojević Srđan Spasojević
Starring	Sergej Trifunović Srđan Todorović
Music by	Sky Wikluh
Cinematography	Nemanja Jovanov
Editing by	Darko Simić
Studio	Contra Film
Distributed by	Jinga Films (Worldwide) Invincible Pictures (US)
Release date(s)	11 June 2010 (2010-06-11) (Serbia)
Running time	104 minutes (Original cut) 103 minutes (VOD/DVD cut) 99 minutes (United Kingdom cut)
Country	Serbia
Language	Serbian English Swedish
Box office	€6,975 (Serbia)

A Serbian Film (Serbian: Српски филм / Srpski film) is a 2010 Serbian horror film and the first feature film directed, co-written and produced 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 child sexual abuse. The Serbian state investigated the film for crime against sexual morals and crime related to the protection of minors. The film has been banned in Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore, rejected in Norway, and temporarily banned from screening in Brazil where a decision to repeal the film has not been made yet.

Plot

Milos is a semi-retired porn star and lives with his wife Marija and six-year-old son, Petar. His brother Marko is a corrupt police officer who envies Milos's wife and is attracted to her. Marija is curious about her husband's past and is concerned about the family’s income. Lejla, a former co-star, offers Milos a starring role in an art film directed by Vukmir, an independent pornographer who wishes to cast Milos for his powerful erection. Having already caught Petar watching one of his films and not informed on the details of Vukmir's film, Milos is hesitant to participate and continue his career, but accepts to secure his family’s financial future. While meeting Vukmir, Milos passes a bald man and his entourage, regarding them warily.

Shooting begins at an orphanage, where Vukmir feeds Milos instructions through an earpiece given by Vukmir's driver Raša, while a film crew follows him. Milos sees young girl Jeca physically abused and scolded by her mother, who has disgraced her deceased war hero husband's memory by becoming a whore. In a dark room, screens show Jeca seductively eating an ice pop while Milos is fellated by a nurse. Then, Milos is instructed to receive it from the mother, while Jeca watches. Milos refuses, but is forced to continue. Marko later informs him that Vukmir is a former psychologist and has worked in children's TV and state security. Vukmir meets a hesitant Milos afterward to explain his artistic style, showing a film of a woman giving birth to a newborn which is immediately raped by Raša, in what the director terms "newborn porn." The horrified Milos storms out and drives away. At a road junction, he is approached and seduced by Vukmir's female doctor.

A bloodied Milos wakes up in his bed some time later with no memory of what has happened. He returns to the now abandoned set and finds a number of tapes. Viewing them, Milos discovers that he was drugged to induce an aggressive, sexually aroused and suggestible state. At Vukmir's manipulative direction, Milos beats and rapes Jeca's mother before decapitating her to induce rigor mortis and later, a catatonic Milos is sodomized by Vukmir's security. He then watches footage of Lejla voicing concern for Milos, only to be restrained as her teeth are removed. A masked man then enters the room and suffocates her. The footage continues as Milos is led to Jeca's home where an elderly woman praises him for killing her mother and offers Jeca as a "virgin commune." Milos refuses and escapes through a window to an alleyway, where he watches a girl pass by. He begins masturbating and is assaulted by a group of thugs before they are killed by Raša, who then takes Milos back to a warehouse with Vukmir.

At the warehouse, Vukmir's doctor administers more drugs after which Milos overpowers her, sticking the syringe into her throat. He is then taken into a room to have intercourse with two hidden comatose bodies under a sheet. As Milos is guided onto one body the masked man from Lejla’s movie enters and begins raping the other. Vukmir then reveals the masked man to be Marko, his victim to be Marija and finally, that Milos is raping Petar. An enraged Milos lunges at Vukmir and smashes his head against the floor, initiating a brawl during which Marija bludgeons Marko to death with a sculpture. Milos wrestles a gun from a guard and shoots all but the one-eyed Raša, who he kills by sticking his erect penis into his empty eye socket. A dying Vukmir praises Milos' actions as truly worthy of film.

Milos, having recalled his actions, including locking his wife and son in their basement before passing out earlier, returns home to find them. He and his wife come to a mutual understanding that he, his wife, and his child, should die together, so the three gather in bed and embrace before Milos fires a fatal shot through himself, Petar, and Marija. Sometime later a new film crew, including the bald man from earlier, enters the bedroom. He unzips his fly, as the director advises him to "start with the little one."

Cast

• Srđan Todorović as Milos
• Sergej Trifunovic as 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 Petar
• Nenad Heraković as Keeper #1
• Carni Đerić as Keeper #2
• Miodrag Krčmarik as Raša
• Tanja Divnić as Kindergarten teacher

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 a 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 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

Film festival circuit

The first-ever showing of A Serbian Film took place on 15 March 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. He also coaxed a handful of audience members to join him on the stage — where they jointly snorted lines of salt, squeezed lime juice into their eyes and took shots of tequila in order to "understand what Serbians have been through to create a culture of A Serbian Film". The following day, the film played once more.

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

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

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

The film was due to screen on 29 August 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 21 October 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 26 November 2010, the film was refused classification by the Australian Classification Board, banning sales and public showings of the film in Australia. However, on 5 April 2011, the Australian Classification Board approved a censored version of the film. Later in 2011, the censored version was also re-refused classification after review.

On 12 and 16 July 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

A Serbian Film poster in the United Kingdom

On September 24, 2010, A Serbian Film was released uncensored (104 minutes) in Serbian theaters, with screening times scheduled late at night.

The film had a limited release in UK theaters on 10 December 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 6 May 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 release was on 25 October 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.

It has been announced that an uncut version will be released through Invincible Pictures on 22 May 2012 as a limited edition release. Invincible's CEO Tom Ashley had this to say, “Of course we would have preferred an uncut release last year. Unfortunately, the charges brought against Mr. Sala were something we had to seriously factor into that release. Now that those charges have been dropped, we can bring A SERBIAN FILM to its fans as its director had intended.”

Censorship

In September 2011 Netflix removed the film from their list of titles available for viewing, and from their in-site search results without any official explanation. It remains available in uncensored form on other major online DVD sites.

Spain

A Serbian Film was banned by a court in San Sebastián, Spain 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). The film was shown at an adults-only screening at the Spanish Sitges Film Festival during October 2010. As a result, the festival's director Ángel Sara was 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. The charges were later dropped.

Germany

When the movie first came out, the FSK (German motion picture rating organisation) refused to give the movie any rating at all, because there were concerns that the content may violate German federal law. However, on 30 June 2011 the FSK published a cut version of the movie, where all offensive material was removed. This version was 13 minutes shorter than the original and was restricted to only persons 18 years or older (Keine Jugendfreigabe).

Norway

The film was banned in Norway after two months of sales due to violation of criminal law sections 204a and 382 which deal with the sexual representation of children and extreme violence.

Brazil

The film was banned for screening in Brazil. The film was banned due to its content "offending the government of Brazil" This was the first time a film was banned in Brazil since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. As of 2012 this decision has been overturned and the film given a "not recommended for those under the age of 18, due to depictions of sex, pedophilia, violence and cruelty" rating.

Australia

The film is currently banned in Australia.

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

It was refused classification and thus effectively banned in South Australia just days before its release date.

On 19 September 2011, the Australian Classification Review Board also 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."

New Zealand

On 25 May 2012 the film was banned outright by the New Zealand Office of Film & Literature Classification.

Malaysia

On August 24, 2012, the film was rejected and banned without question by the Film Censorship Board of Malaysia.

Singapore

On August 24, 2012, the same day, it was banned in Singapore due to its content being "likely to cause controversy in Singapore".

Critical reception

The film was released to great controversy over its sexual 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."

In an interview, Serbian actor and film director Dragan Bjelogrlić criticized the film: "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 - and then pays for his son's education abroad and eventually 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. The second generation comes back to the country and using the money that was robbed from the people of Serbia, smears the very same people by portraying them as the worst scum of the earth. You know, when the first generation of the Rockefellers finished robbing America, 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."

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.

Đorđe Bajić and Zoran Janković of the web magazine Popboks gave the film a highly affirmative review, summing it up as "the dark Grand Guignol that shreds its celluloid victims with unconcealed intensity while showing in full colour and detail, the collapse of the last bastions of decency, morality, and rationality" and concluding that "it has a lot to say outside of the mere and unrestrained exploitation."

United States

The film received mixed to negative reviews. Based on 24 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 42% 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 [Eli Roth's] Hostel does about America, which is a little, but nothing on the scale its title suggests."

Tim Anderson of horror review site Bloody Disgusting attempted to dissuade 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 favourite viewing experiences of the year.

Calum Waddell of Total Sci-Fi in a negative review took issue with the film-makers' statements that their movie says something about the politics of Serbia, writing, "if you want to learn about Serbia, chances are, you won't be watching a movie whose main claim to fame is that a man rapes a newborn baby", before concluding that "Srdjan Spasojevic will go to his grave being known as the guy who filmed a grown man having sex with a baby. And that's something that – despite all of the money, attention and champagne parties at Cannes – I would never want on my conscience. Good luck to him in regaining some humanity."

Alternatively, Karen Oughton's review in Scream: The Horror Magazine was positive. Oughton's review focused particularly on the cultural reaction to the film's implications for censorship, arguing that the way publications including Bloody Disgusting overtly incorporated personal taste into their evaluation of the film ("But, the one thing it is not, is entertainment.") was tantamount to political policing.

An interesting review came from Total Film magazine. Awarding the film two stars out of five, the reviewer found the film's shock hype not to be fully deserved: ...a film that was slightly silly and none-too-distressing to begin with. Works best as a reflection on modern day porn’s obsession with masochism and humiliation.

A Serbian Film was voted for once as part of the top ten films of all time in Sight and Sound Magazine's Critics' poll.

Interpretation by the film's creator

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."

According to Spasojević, the character of Vukmir is "an exaggerated representation of the new European film order ... the Western world has lost feelings, so they’re searching for false ones, they want to buy feelings."

In another interview Spasojević is quoted as saying "my shocking 'A Serbian Film' denounces the fascism of political correctness." Questioned by the Croatian media on whether the violence depicted deals with crimes committed by Serbian soldiers during the Yugoslav Wars, Spasojević answered: "'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."

See also

• List of banned films
• August Underground's Mordum

External links

• Official website (Serbia)
• Official website (US)
• A Serbian Film at the Internet Movie Database
• A Serbian Film at AllRovi
• A Serbian Film at Rotten Tomatoes
• Invincible Pictures (North American distributor)