A Serbian Film

Milos is a retired porn star who is lured out of retirement for one last skinflick by the promise of a paycheck that will set his family up for life. The catch is that he cannot know the script before he goes on set. Almost immediately he finds himself pressured by Vukmir, the secretive director, into increasingly unsettling acts. There is always a logic of escalation in a film like A Serbian Film, so when – less than halfway through –there is a sequence which suggests that a man is having sex with a newborn baby, we know that things are going to get very unpleasant indeed. And they do.

The filmmakers claim that they want the viewer to experience the degradation of life in Serbia, where (they say) to live is to be a victim of exploitation, but the film rarely rises above the deadening desire to shock. A true victim has no choice. You do. So don't watch this horrible film. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]