PašAga;2182831 schrieb:
Ein Link wäre nicht schlecht...
so, da habe ich davon gelesen und dann suchte ich den Trailer
“Skinning” Reveals Roots of Violence in Serbia
The hooligan violence that has occupied the media for the last week or so has given a serendipitous boost to a new Serbian film that explores the theme.
Andrej Klemencic
Documentarist images meet engaged film-making, the edges of truth and politics are blurred and blood flows on the city’s pavements. An inspiring young cast and talented director have put together one of the best Serbian films in years.
On October 10th I watched from my apartment window as hooligans faced down police outside the French Embassy in Belgrade. Molotov cocktails were thrown and I closed the shutters and double-locked the doors not knowing what would happen next. Some two weeks later as the lights went out in the cinema, the voice of a TV anchor and footage from a demonstration blended with feature film images, leaving more than a few in the audience thinking they were watching a repetition of those earlier events. This convincing mixture of documentarist black and white imaging with actors in a real-life Belgrade TV studio forms the backbone of Stevan Filipovic’s Skinning.
Filipovic who, previous to Skinning made a wannabe snuff urban horror movie, has turned out to be a talented film-maker. Faced with the difficult task of avoiding making a propaganda film, he decided to focus solely on the story, the strength of his actors and allows in just one element of bias - his love for Belgrade.
Filipovic opens the movie with some stills of industrial hopelessness in Belgrade 2010. In doing so he runs the risk of receiving an ‘arty’ label or perhaps suggesting that he has little say, and fewer ways of expressing it, but it works convincingly here as a metaphor for the empty, aimless lives of the young. Throughout the 98-minute film, you realise that much beauty can be delivered by skilful use of a limited budget - in this case just €500,000. Good sharp editing, high-quality sound and the overall quality of image make this film not just another urban-youth project but a serious contender for the most popular films of the year.
The anti-hero of Skinning, Novica, lives a with his unstable, detached father. He is a developing mathematical genius and his affectionate teacher invests great efforts in making his talent blossom.
One day, this quiet boy meets the charming leader of a football fan club and his downward spiral begins. I would be hard pressed to think of an actor who could pull off this transformation from maths nerd to violent, militant leader of an ultra right group as convincingly as the young Nikola Rakocevic. As much as we feel his everyday concerns and even political detachment at the beginning of the film, he, in just a few sequences, creates a completely believable genuinely bad and a truly lost character.
Novica takes us to the Belgrade underground where a group of Nazi sympathisers plot football violence and other small-scale crimes.
Arrested at a football match, Novica meets the other bad guy of this film, a police inspector, who is in charge of managing the fans. His character is used as a bridge between the forces of order and the forces of destruction. The delicate task of playing him has been entrusted to the experienced Nikola Kojo. Kojo has been typecast as a good guy with a grudge or a bad guy with a smile so frequently that he just plays the stereotype and delivers no subtlety, or edge. Another big name of Serbian film and theatre actor, Predrag Ejdus, who plays the ultra-nationalist ideologist of the Serbian-Nazi group is another disappointment. These two actors simply can’t keep pace with the young and talented Rakocevic, or perhaps, to a lesser extent, Bojana Novakovic who plays a skinhead girl. Fortunately these casting issues were one of Filipovic’s only errors.
While Novica changes Timberland for Diesel, a pen for a metal bar and going out on dates for throwing Molotov cocktails at Roma settlements, a young female police inspector tries to help him see the way out.
At times this is an uncomfortable movie which explores the boundaries of good and evil and makes one question one’s understanding of the motivations of modern youth. Ultimately however Filipovic has put together an urban classic.
Unfortunately the film is not subtitled so you’ll need sound Serbian or the help of a Serbian speaker to get the most from this memorable movie.
This article is funded under the BICCED project, supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme.