Izgubljena zemlja

Scenery and sets, the details and camera work, are on spot, but the movie is riddled with problems.

There is a lack of motivation found in every single character.

The sound is non-existent, when it's not a simplistic radio news show invading the scenes but missing the point and stating the obvious creating a fake documentary vibe.

The lines are crude and feel lifeless, as if an asocial academic is struggling to patch up sentences that a nurse, a student and a retired communist official would say in a bar.

And don't get me started with the awful acting of supporting actors - it's so awful that it gets ridiculous.

There are some long scenes of people walking and looking around that make you reach for your phone to check how much do you have to wait before leaving the cinema.

Nice try, a couple of old actors are experienced heavy weights, but overall a miss.

Beautiful camerawork, production, and the filmmaker Vladimir Perisic is providing interesting themes of politics and the time period of Serbia. Unfortunately, it fails to fully achieve it's success with an narrative that feels too lost to focus on it's message.

Serbian culture and it's politics isn't something I am familiar with and to make movies from their perspectives is interesting. As mentioned the camerawork, production designs and some of the concepts explored are pretty interesting and helps to establish it's time period and setting. Unfortunately, the narrative, while does offer some interesting concepts, fails because it doesn't fully grasp well with it's themes and proceeds to feel aimless and flying around like nothing. Including characters that felt too-staged that it loses it's sense of realism and purpose.

The performances weren't the greatest. Jasna Djuricic gives the best performance in the movie but the main lead, Jovan Ginic, tries but it just wasn't good enough to fully develop the role's emotions and their strengths. The worse aspect is the dialogue. Man, the dialogue clearly feels like it was written by someone who doesn't understand human communication and it feels like something ChatGPT would have written down.

It's unfortunate cause this movie does have something hidden somewhere that could be amazing and great but fails because of the lifeless writing, undeveloped characters, and it's repetitive nature. Failing to become a good art-house movie.