Out of Focus: Serbia

For nearly two years, Serbia’s film funding system has effectively been frozen, with no calls for fiction, documentary or experimental production from the Film Center Serbia. New films have been put on hold, quietly enough that Europe’s film world has barely looked up. International co-productions may keep a few films moving, but cannot replace a working domestic system.

All the while, the country itself is in motion: mass anti-corruption protests, led by students and organised through plenums, have become a defining force in public life.

This selection brings together six films that, in very different ways, reflect a society caught between memory, change and uncertainty. They move from the intimate aftermath of family trauma to the vast landscapes of Yugoslavia and the United States, from migrant labour and architectural isolation to questions of belonging, nostalgia and political resistance.

Marko Grba Singh and Stefan Malešević, film programmers

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  Desire Lines
  An insomniac loner in Belgrade obsessively tracks his younger brother’s suspicious movements, only to realise that the mystery lies within himself.
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  How Come It’s All Green Out Here?
  A filmmaker accompanies his father to Croatia to rebury his refugee grandmother, on a journey that unsettles his memories of family, home and the past.
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  Promised Spaces
  From a crowded worker dormitory, from an empty gated community, they face a skyline of unfinished towers.
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  Sisters
  As doctors fight to save her older sister’s life following a suicide attempt, eleven-year-old Petra wanders through the hospital, haunted by the argument that preceded it and struggling to make sense of her own guilt.
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  Until the Day Ends
  Set against the backdrop of Serbia’s ongoing protests, an anarchist student and a pro-government young man find themselves fleeing Belgrade together.
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  Yugo Goes to America
  Three young friends from Serbia drive a decades-old Yugo from New York to Los Angeles, retracing the forgotten journey of Yugoslavia’s most infamous export in this funny and poignant road documentary.