I never wanted to make compromises in order to hammer things home. But during making this film and preparing it, I never wanted to think about consequence. You must have known that many would just take the film at face value, as another torture-porn film. How so? It’s likely your average North American horror fan probably won’t see the cultural implications you’re trying to explore. I’m talking about Serbia, about Serbian problems. You will find the living hell down there. If you scratch the perfect surface of society in today’s world, you will of course find bad things down there. It’s all about expressing some recessed emotions about our region and the world also.
The last few decades of war have left a political and social nightmare here in Serbia. It also looks like pornography it’s about power, influence and all of those things. In Serbia, the biggest stars on television are politicians. But it was inevitable, because in Serbia a big part of our lives is about politics. I didn’t want to express my political choices. Of course, there is a kind of political and social level to the film, but I didn’t want to make any kind of political statement. The main character in the film could be a singer, a manager or a baker he would end up the same - rape and killed. The major metaphorical take was to treat real life as pornography.
We just wanted to express our deepest and honest feelings towards our region and also the world in general - a world that is sugarcoated in political correctness, but also very rotten under that façade - with a movie style we liked.Ĭan you elaborate a bit more on the metaphorical aspects of the film, with respects to its blunt commentary on Serbian politics and history? What lead you and your co-writer Aleksandar Radivojevic to dream this tale up?
We placed a call to Serbia to speak with Spasojevic, who elaborates on the blunt politics behind the film and takes on his detractors. That’s why it’s our DVD/Blu-ray pick of the week. But unlike the “Saw” and “Human Centipede” franchises that merely revel in creative ways to disgust, “A Serbian Film” is unarguably the product of a man with something to say and the skill to say it. Spasojevic spares no punches in bringing to the screen his story of a unemployed porn star who agrees to participate in a mysterious ‘art film,’ only to discover he’s signed on to star in a snuff film involving child rape. The film is everything you feared and more. The director of the Sitges Film Festival of Catalonia even came under fire from the city of Barcelona for simply screening the film in its lineup.Įveryone’s overreacting, right? Nope. Since premiering on the festival circuit last year, it’s enraged and provoked for its gruesome depiction of rape, child sodomy, murder and necrophilia.
How does Milos get his revenge? He kills one of the bad guys by thrusting his schlong into the guy’s eye socket.Īnd do we really need to once again recount the aforementioned “baby rape”? As if pairing those two words together doesn’t tell the whole story.If there’s one film that rivals the controversy surrounding “The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence,” it’s “A Serbian Film” by first-time director Srdjan Spasojevic. The only problem is, his new employer’s only demand is that Milos do everything he says, which includes having sex with a bruised woman after she bites his penis and riding another woman doggy-style before hacking her up with a machete.
It’s the story of a washed-up porn star, Milos, desperate to provide for his wife and young son, and when an opportunity arises to pull in serious cash, he jumps at it. In a rare case of fulfilled expectations, those who were brave enough to catch A Serbian Film after its pre-release hype learned firsthand that Spasojević’s ruthless debut is every bit as eye-gouging as its been made out to be. The loudest cry: “Beware of the ‘baby rape’ scene!” Months before its limited stateside debut, director Srđan Spasojević’s visceral, modern-day exploitation picture was the talk of genre festivals worldwide, earning a violent reputation as a film that’s nearly unbearable in its sadism. Before The Human Centipede II dethroned it, the heavily maligned A Serbian Film had made sick movie haters forget all about the first Centipede flick this past May.