The Other Side of Everything

A century of Serbian history is sketched from a highly personal perspective in Mila Turajlić’s absorbing documentary, which focuses on her mother Srbijanka and the Belgrade apartment their family has resided in since it was purchased by Mila’s great-grandfather in the early 1900s. In 1947, the apartment was divided up by Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Communist regime into separate units, and in 2017 a locked door still divided Srbijanka’s rooms from another where an elderly woman named Nada lived (Nada is briefly interviewed for a census, describing herself as a "true proletariat"; her death occasions prying the door open at last). The film uses feisty Srbijanka’s career to sketch Serbia’s recent history. As a professor at the University of Belgrade, Srbijanka became an outspoken member of the opposition to Slobodan Milošević, the country’s notorious president during the 1990s. After he was forced from power in 2000, she served as Deputy Minister of Higher Education in the new government formed by the Democratic Party of Serbia. Today she sees the nation sliding once more into nationalistic authoritarianism, and while she is celebrated in some circles for her past activism in pursuit of democracy, she now urges the younger generation to take up the torch even as her own thoughts about the future turn increasingly pessimistic (when receiving an award, she wryly observes that she is being honored for her failures). At once an intimate portrait of an admirable woman and a broader look at a troubled land, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)