Roy Stafford on Parallel Mothers ( Madres paralelas, Spain 2021).
John David hall on The Promise ( La promesse, France 2020)
¡Viva! 28 #2: Contactado (Peru-Brazil-Norway-Venzuela 2020).¡Viva! 28 #3: El árbol rojo ( The Red Tree, Colombia 2021).¡Viva! 28 #4: La estrella roja ( The Red Star, Argentina 2021).This is powerful film-making and draws upon the absurdist vein of Catch 22 and MASH it’s a bleakly occasionally comic portrayal of the war that is brilliantly made and uncomfortable to view from a political standpoint. Does that make the film racist? Not necessarily as it could be argued that this is a film from the Serbian perspective no doubt being surrounded by others who want to kill you is a terrifying experience and the enemy will seem monstrous. Krstic fails, however, to note that this is in itself racist – the enemy as the monstrous Other. The Muslims who surround the militia are entirely dehumanised, Krstic himself points out that this is drawing of tropes of Hollywood’s representation of the Vietnam war where ‘Charlie’ was an invisible presence in the jungle. That said I did find the film disturbing. One of the ways this is done is through the casting of Velimir Bata Zivojinovic as the unit’s commander Zivojinovic starred in many Partisan films that were important in the myth-making of Tito’s Yugoslavia. While it’s easy to see why the film appears to be pro-Serbian, as we rarely get any other view than the militia’s, Krstic also demonstrates the film’s nuances principally that the ragtag bunch of militia are not portrayed as likeable characters and in this the film is also challenging Serbia’s national mythology. In an excellent article Igor Krstic ( ) notes that although Croatian critics dubbed the film pro-Serbian (Croatia was also embroiled in the war against Serbs/Serbia) it was also the first Serbian film to be successful in neighbouring countries after the war ended. Unsurprisingly the film divided opinion when it was release. Much of the narrative features flashbacks of how the disparate members of the militia joined up from the viewpoint of a number of them recuperating, after the event, in hospital. After scene setting, with a newsreel about the Brotherhood and Unity (such irony runs throughout the film) tunnel first opened in the 1970s, most of the plot takes place 20 years later in the dilapidated and unfinished tunnel as the militia seek shelter from the Bosnian army. The main protagonist is Milan who, in pre-war years, ran a business with his Muslim mate. Its complex structure focuses on a band of Bosnian-Serb militia who, amongst other things, burn Muslim villages. The abomination of war is accentuated in civil war Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (original title translates better as Beautiful villages burn beautifully) covers the post-Yugoslavian war of the 1990s that foreshadowed the current ‘conflict’ between ‘the west’ and Muslims.