Scenes of Despair From the Inside

Officially the country that still calls itself Yugoslavia is putting on a brave face. It took a booth in the international marketplace at the Cannes Film Festival and handed out a glossy booklet titled “Yugoslav Film: Culture of the Impossible.” But to talk with directors from Belgrade is to hear the voice of depression and despair.

They are shocked, of course, at the carnage that has swept their country. But even though they’re aware that the blame for the conflict is placed almost unanimously on their country, it is impossible for most Serbs, who have viewed themselves as the downtrodden people in the region since losing the celebrated “Field of Black Birds” battle to the Turks in 1389, to see it the same way.

Even Serbian director Srdjan Karanovic, who says his presence at the film festival is testament to what he thinks, goes no further than “everyone is responsible, but the Serbian side is at least a bit more responsible.” The causes were not religious or national, he says, “it was about robbery, as simple as that.” Echoing this is Srdjan Dragojevic, director of “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame,” who says the conflict is “a new and primitive war for money, a kind of bloody capitalist revolution which established a new class of war rich.”

Others, like “Tito and Me” director Goran Markovic, while bemoaning “this dirty war and this very big fascism in ex-Yugoslavia,” see the conflict as a civil war (a claim that makes Sarajevans, who were attacked without provocation, completely apoplectic) and are troubled by Serbia’s image in the world.

“It’s not true that the whole Serbian nation are war criminals; you can’t blame the whole nation for people who made this war,” Markovic says. “There were very, very brave people in Belgrade who were against this war. I don’t like this primitive view that Serbs are Indians, the Muslims are cowboys. It’s a very complicated situation. Even here we can’t understand everything.”

Sounding the most upbeat is “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” director Dragojevic, but he is speaking from New York, where it has just been announced that he will co-direct “It’s Me, the Hero,” starring Harvey Keitel. This good fortune is the result of the worldwide reception of his film, which, though as yet unreleased in the United States, has won awards at festivals from Sa~o Paolo to Stockholm.

With scenes of Serbian soldiers looting and laying waste to Muslim villages, “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” was the first film to show Serbs in a negative light and was a sensation in Belgrade, with the most admissions of any film of the year.

“There were 5,000 people at the premiere,” reports Los Angeles-based actress Lisa Moncure, the only American in either the cast or the crew. “People were crying; there was something like a 15-minute standing ovation. . . . They were overwhelmed by it.”

Given its willingness to show Serb transgressions, one might think that “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” would be embraced by Sarajevo, but its reception illustrates the uncrossable barriers a war at home can create. Its share-the-blame philosophy has attracted hostility from a city that was a victim of a brutal siege.

“I think it’s disgusting, a very nasty film,” says director Haris Pasovic, head of the first Sarajevo film festival. “Saying that Serbia was so provoked it went too far in self-defense is a popular Serb theory, but it mixes everything up.”

Says Mirsad Purivatra, who runs the current festival: “The idea that everyone is guilty on some level is unacceptable to me as a human being. Defending yourself and killing to make a bigger country and destroying all traces of another nation’s culture are not on the same level.”