10 Mean Films For Mean Times

Director Srdan Spasojevic claims A Serbian Film is a parody of the kind of politically correct features being made in Serbia, but the rest of the world begged to differ and the picture was promptly banned in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore, among other countries. In the UK, the film was trimmed by 4 minutes, excising some of the sexual violence.

Briefly, the plot involves an aging, struggling porn star who agrees to participate in an “art film” without realizing that his director’s brand of pornography involves new born children. The premise is supposedly a dark joke, but it’s difficult to say whether it’s being made at the expense of the film’s characters, the Serbian film industry or the viewer.

Reviewing the picture for the BBC, Mark Kermode called A Serbian Film a “nasty piece of exploitation trash” redolent of the excesses of Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato. “If it is somehow an allegory of Serbian politics,” he said, “then the allegory gets lost amidst the increasingly stupid splatter.”