Srbenka

Manipulative attempt to present the issue of national Serbs in contemporary and post-war Croatia which could not be further from the truth. The case of murder of Aleksandra Zec has much more to do with mafia connections of her father than her nationality, even though war crimes agains both Croatian and Serbian civilians were not exception in the post-Yugoslav war on the territory of Croatia. However, art is even nowadays mostly playground of the communist descendants in Croatia, who regret the loss of Yugoslav identity much more than any human victims in the 1990s wars. Since myth of Yugoslavia would not be a particularly interesting topic for financing or for Western audience in general, they create this kind of manipulative narratives that show Yugoslav officers as heroes (his recent short film) or Yugoslav kid (mother of Aleksandra Zec was a Croat and her father Serbian) as victim due to its (mixed?) nationality. Interestingly, Slijepcevic lacks interest in any Croatian children and civilians who were murdered during a five-year aggression of ex-Yugoslav army on Croatia. And may I add, all of his films are financed exclusively by the public Croatian money.

It seems to me that the film Srbenka (and probably the corresponding play "Aleksandra Zec") got made with an aim to get the maximum media exposure for dealing with, at this point, a traditionally sensitive issue, rather than to provide an insightful look at the violence-based-on-nationality, or to offer any workable solution for the issue at hand.

For example, here we meet a 12-year-old girl Nina, who in real life is constantly getting teased and/or bullied due to her Serbian ethnicity. That is unfortunate, for sure, but the film here goes out of its way to say that her whole elementary school experience got ruined by this fact, and that it would have been completely different if she was not a minority. Excuse me? Did the people behind this film ever went to school? Children are constantly and since forever getting teased by their peers for being different, whether it is for their ethnicity, religion, looks, smarts, clothes, or any of the other 6723 reasons. In fact, this film actually shows (at one point) how direct and judgemental schoolchildren can be, but those remarks are only met with the uncomfortable laughter from the crew. Hence, I believe they never cared about peer violence here. They just wanted stir up a big buck.