I included these excerpts for a two reasons. These three quotes sum up the range of critical feeling around Srđan Spasojević’s feature film debut, 2010’s A Serbian Film. 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 think the film is tragic, sickening, disturbing, twisted, absurd, infuriated, and actually quite intelligent. That it may also be an example of those things is no contradiction.” –A. The framing tale, with its allusions to the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the greed and political corruption that followed, can thus be seen as a piece of corrosive social criticism, exposing a national psychology of sadism, misogyny and self-pity. Spasojevic’s movie and also, perhaps more directly, to the movie inside it, which Vukmir envisions as a transcendent expression of Serbia’s national identity. 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.” –Alison Wilmore They can also just use them for pure shock/novelty/boundary-pushing, which is where I’d group Serbian Film.

“ Movies can use transgressive topics and imagery toward great artistic resonance. Collier Horror, Mystery, Oh! The Horror, review, Thriller 0

A serbian film ending scene