How did you get funding for such an extreme film? A Serbian Film is one of the very few instances of a truly independently made film in Serbia in the last few decades. It was financed by private funds and never got a penny from state-supported competitions or funds – although this is customary for most films in Serbia, where the state participates at least partially in the production or post-production.


How difficult was it to cast such a movie, particularly the under- age actor who plays Milos’ son? The casting went pretty smoothly because we managed to get the actors who were our first choices. We were lucky that they all believed in the idea of A Serbian Film and wanted to take part in a project like this. The same with the kid playing Milos’ son. His parents understood very well the message we’re sending with this film and had absolute trust in us.


What’s your attitude towards horror? Al- though A Serbian Film is not a “pure” ex- ample of that genre, that’s the label it gets most often because of its extreme im- agery, gore and shocks. I’m not much into theory, including genre theory. I view horror like any other genre, but I have to note that it offers a wide variety of different films. I feel closer to films like The Exorcist, Halloween or The Shining than to those made for sheer entertainment, although there are great movies among them, too. Trash horrors can also be very in- triguing and intelligent, regardless of whether that approach was taken because of a limited budget, avoid- ing seriousness or the author was seriously interested in that partic- ular style. They seem like a sep- arate genre to me, and it’s great we can enjoy all those kinds. A Serbian Film is cer- tainly not a conventional


horror film, but because of its overall impact and impression created, it doesn’t seem to be able to avoid the horror label, although I see it primarily as a drama that ventures down into hell. Which brings us back to horror, I guess? [Laughs]


How did you meet your co-screenwriter, Alexandar Radivo- jevic, and how did the story develop? Alexandar is the son of my professor from film school, noted director Milos Radivojevic. Although we are very different, both of us had a very clear idea about what we wanted and how to get it. The aim was to use the deepest and most sincere feelings towards the world we live in, combined with a cinematic style we love, and to nail all that onto the screen with no com- promises or second thoughts about possible reactions to such an approach in the schizophrenic world of false morality. Our work on this script went rather smoothly and brought out a very good combination of my action-re- venge ‘’Chuck Norris’’ hero and Alexandar’s favourite horror “character,” namely Evil. Evil itself – pure or in any of its extreme forms of manifesta- tion.


Why title it A Serbian Film? I’ve been thinking long about the title. A Serbian Film came to me as the first option and it remained the most accurate. It is a complex title which is explained by the film itself. It refers to Serbian films in general and to any kind of Serbian product which has lost its identity. The title is one of those things I’d rather not explain or provide guidelines for its interpreta- tion. That should be left to the viewers.


Was the movie inspired by any particular real-life inci- dents, or is it simply the fallout of growing up during wartime? To live in these regions in the past few decades meant experiencing a unique real-life horror. You don’t need anything more inspiring than that. Serbia participated in a few civil wars (Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo) in a very short time and was devastated by NATO bombings for three months. Do you expect that such events would not leave any consequences? People who live elsewhere, especially in the West, don’t want to know about prob- lems in certain regions and they think that films like this are being made out of boredom or for the sake of shock or in order to get “big bucks.”


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