Mamaroš

In 1999 NATO's bombs, intended to halt
the Milošević regime's genocidal attacks in
Kosovo, were greeted with an element of
defiant patriotism by the majority of the
Serbian population. Cineaste Pera sees out
the air attacks in his Belgrade cinema.
Just as his mother, an old-school communist,
continues to blindly believe in Tito's socalled
"Third Way", refusing to accept the
policies of Milošević, it's only a strike on
the neighbouring district which convinces
him to leave his cinema. An army unit approaches
in order to confiscate his father's
film projectors for military purposes.
His mother has long taken care of matters
however, having managed to procure him
an American visa via green card lottery.
Serbian director Momčilo Mrdaković's
attempts a Southeast European take on
CINEMA PARADISO with a hero who has
to overcome far more difficulties than
Giuseppe Tornatore's Sicilian Salvatore.
After a conventional beginning Mrdaković
raises his plot to the level of a playful
analysis on the dream and reality of an
apolitical bystander, thus moving from
often obscure details from recent Serbian
history to the universal issue of how one
should feel and act when neither war nor
moral resistance appeal.