lobbbby-17977 Reviews

The Other Side of Everything (2017)

To stay or not to stay

[10/10 · 7 May 2023]

The Other Side of Everything is a complex documentary about the last 100 years of the history of Yugoslavia (and later Serbia). But this is not your typical documentary. There are three intertwined stories in the movie. The first is about the Turajlic family - mainly about the movie director Mila Turajlic and her mother, Slobodanka, a university professor and political dissident. It tells the story of a family of intellectuals whose downfall started with the communist regime but was accelerated with the rise of Milosevic and later Vucic. The second storyline is about their apartment, which was split and partially seized by the communists. The family lives in their half of the original apartment, which is a testament to the history of both the family and the country. Finally, the third storyline shows historical moments that shaped the country, with an emphasis on the rise and fall of Milosevic's regime.

This is a brilliant documentary, and Mila Turajlic proves that she has a remarkable talent for telling a complex history of a country from a unique and complex perspective. This movie follows the turbulent history of Yugoslavia and Serbia and how it affected one family. It is a movie that anyone in Serbia could identify with, as everyone went through those struggles, and everyone at some point had similar thoughts of whether staying and living in Serbia was worth it or whether they should emigrate and never look back.

Cinema Komunisto (2010)

Once upon a time

[10/10 · 7 May 2023]

Communist Yugoslavia was a unique country in the history of the world. While communism meant stagnation and poverty everywhere else, Yugoslavia split from Stalin in the early days after WWII and became the only progressive communist country ever. The country was built on a communist foundation, but because of the mentioned split, Yugoslavia made close ties with the West. That meant a lot of freedom for its citizens. People could travel freely around the world (with a very powerful passport, they didn't need visas for almost any country), the small private businesses were allowed which helped the economy to thrive, the middle class was well off, and people were watching Hollywood movies and listened to western music, which brought country culturally closer to the West than East.

Cinema Komunisto is a brilliant documentary that depicts the history of communist Yugoslavia through the lenses of its movie industry. Yugoslavia should be studied in the history books as a unique and complex experiment that was very successful for some time until it spectacularly failed. Both events, the rise and the fall, should be studied, as many conclusions can be made from both of them. Cinema Komunisto doesn't try to take a holistic approach but documents the rise and the fall from a unique perspective. Anyone interested in the history of Yugoslavia will enjoy this film as it provides another view of that country that can't be found in any other documentary.