Miami International Film Festival 2010

U.S. Premiere.

War’s dehumanizing effects on man lie at the heart of this feature from Serbian writer-director Vladimir Perisic. Charting the course of one devastating day in the life of a young soldier, Dzoni (Relja Popovic), a 20-year-old recruit in an unspecified war meant to evoke the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, the film opens as the boy and his comrades travel by bus to an abandoned farm, where they must stand by for further orders. Another bus arrives, unloading groups of men who the commander explains are enemies of the government and must be killed. Dzoni, along with the other soldiers, shoots the men hesitantly at first, then with increasing enthusiasm. Perisic poignantly chronicles this brutal initiation into the cruel ritual of military killing and suggests an unsettling parallel between acclimatization to violence and learning the basics of a new job.  A multiple winner at the 2009 Sarajevo Film Festival, including Best Film.