The Cleansing of Undesirable Art in Serbia

There have not been many films or works of art in general produced in Serbia after 2000, which aim at critically examining the recent wartime past. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even when some of them succeeded abroad, they were sidelined or marginalized in the country. The state, its institutions, the media, party personnel, the cultural establishment, and a wide front of volunteer bots played a decisive role in this. I will attempt to illustrate some of the mechanisms used to bunker undesirable film production by examining the reception of the works of Ognjen Glavonić, one of the most important filmmakers of the younger generation in Serbia.

After 2000, television and film production in Serbia paved four main paths: 1) revisionist; 2) anti-communist; 3) mythologizing/victimizing; and 4) entertaining, which combines all previous elements as a platform for establishing a new national identity. In such an environment, two films emerged which were significant to the process of dealing with the past. Those are films by director Ognjen Glavonić: the documentary Depth Two (2016) and the feature The Load (2018). Both films address the same topic: the discovery of mass graves near Batajnica, where 705 bodies of Kosovo Albanians, citizens of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, were found – mostly civilians, men, and women, including 75 children – killed during the war of 1999. This crime was briefly discussed publicly in March 2001, but within a year, the topic was suspended and pushed aside, as Glavonić himself says, into the parallel reality of a populist spectacle, where such facts are devalued and relativized.

The director spoke on several occasions about the difficulties he encountered while working on the film. He first came across the subject in late 2009, but along with lengthy research, his struggle to secure funding for the production of a feature film went on. In the meantime, so much footage had accumulated that, with production support from the Humanitarian Law Center, Glavonić completed the documentary Depth Two (2016) first, which attempted to shed light on a dark spot on the map of war crimes that remain protected by a societal contract of silence. This extraordinary film was first screened at the Berlinale, and then at festivals around the world, but not in Serbia. The director himself said that the film further closed doors for him and labeled him a “traitor.” With such baggage, he continued working on his feature film The Load, which was completed after many rejections by the Serbian Film Center, the only place where one could apply for the funds necessary for the production of a feature-length film. Glavonić, nevertheless, managed to finish it. Its premiere was at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, followed by screenings at festivals in Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Pristina, Košice, and Saint Petersburg, where the film won several awards.

The premiere in Cannes encouraged the local media, especially RTS, which loves to boast about its glamorous film chronicles. It is interesting to see how the theme of Glavonić’s film was presented to the domestic audience: “His debut feature The Load is an anti-war drama based on a true event during the conflict in Kosovo and Metohija, and the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. The focus is on an intimate human drama about the relationships between fathers and sons across three generations, with references to the partisan legacy and World War II.” What can be gleaned about the actual theme of the film from this quote? Almost nothing. In fact, the film’s synopsis was repackaged into a format that the RTS editorial team assumed would be acceptable under the conditions of political censorship. Thus, it is not a film about a man who transported the bodies of murdered Albanians during the 1999 war in a refrigerated truck, but an intimate drama about sons, fathers, and grandfathers spanning from World War II to the NATO bombing. This extensive formula was presented with the added allure of festival glamour and competition in the “Directors’ Fortnight” program, initiated half a century ago by the famed Jean-Luc Godard. In such a news item, the specificity of the real load — of a society weighed down by its wartime past — was lost, and the focus was shifted to the potential marketing success of the film on the global festival stage.

After returning to Serbia, the film faced distribution problems. It was first shown at the Author Film Festival and continued to be screened under strictly controlled conditions, with a limited number of screenings, conceptually paired with a discussion with the director. One could say that the film was seen only by the domestic audience that already knew what it was about and attended the screenings specifically for that reason, interested in the topic and its cinematic treatment. On the other hand, at least six months before the domestic premiere, a broad propaganda mechanism was activated in preparation for the bunkering of the undesirable film. The media played a role in this, as did the Police Union, which sent an appeal to the president, the prime minister, and the minister of culture to prevent the screening of the “anti-Serbian film” which “represents a humiliation for the entire Serbian nation and all war participants and heroes who gave their lives for their homeland.” The Association of Kidnapped and Missing Serbs from Kosovo launched a propaganda strike against the Serbian Film Center for financing Glavonić’s film. The tabloids crafted a narrative about “imaginary refrigerated trucks,” “non-existent Serbian war crimes,” and “civil sector lies.” Actually, a parallel reality swiftly transformed the facts about the past into their opposite, creating a public impression that Glavonić’s work was in fact part of a programmed anti-Serbian campaign that had been ongoing in the region for at least thirty years. There was no possibility for the film to be broadcasted on television. The anticipated moments of public engagement that Glavonić, referencing Pasolini’s famous thesis, saw as educational “addressing young people on the path to becoming fascists” did not materialize. The state actually used Glavonić and his work to further educate citizens about the dangers lurking from the distant and hostile world, thereby fostering ideological homogenization, particularly among younger generations who readily accept the notion of Serbian victimhood.

Inversion lies at the heart of the propaganda machinery controlled by the Republic of Serbia. The parallel reality is sustained under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. Cultural institutions, cinemas, cultural centers, libraries, museums, theaters, and the media, all of these operate in deep synergy with these departments. They do not allow the real facts about the past to be stored or distributed on a screen, on pages of a book, or online. Quite often, instead of accurate information, fake or parodic entries are created on the pages of Serbian Wikipedia, concealing traces of undesirable art in Serbia. If, by some chance, such works break through to the public, these cases are treated as sites of mass crime: the area is sealed off with red tape, the media and experts are engaged to explain what kind of scandal has occurred, and very often the artists themselves are accused of committing or planning a crime. As a result, a hole opens in the public space where the work disappears into oblivion, bunkered indefinitely. Today, several works from film, literature, visual arts, and theater are located in this discursive void in the public space of the Republic of Serbia. All these works, in accordance with fascist practices, are treated as degenerate art (Entartete Kunst) that threatens the nation’s health. Among them are Glavonić’s two films. In line with the treatment of these works, the status of their authors in society is similarly marginalized, and their impact on the process of confronting the past is proportionate.

Saša Ilić (Jagodina, 1972) graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. He has published several books of prose. His novel The Dog and the Double Bass (2019) received the NIN Award. He won the “Borislav Pekić” Scholarship for his novel Berlin Window (2005). He wrote the play The Last Thesis on Feuerbach (in print). He is one of the founders of the literary supplement Beton in the newspaper Danas (2006-2013). With the editorial team of Beton, he won the “Dušan Bogavac” Award for journalistic ethics and courage (NUNS, 2007). With Jeton Neziraj, he launched and edited the Polip literary festival in Prishtina (2010-2023). He writes columns for Peščanik and Radar. His prose has been translated into Albanian, English, French, Italian, Macedonian, and German.