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Otac Movie Review

Otac (Father) is a 2020 Serbian drama film directed by Srdjan Golubovic and starring Goran Bogdan. It’s a flawed, but overall surprisingly solid Serbian drama.

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“My children must know I fought for them“

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Nikola is a father of two. Once his family reaches poverty, the mother sets herself on fire and ends up in the hospital. His children are then taken away and he starts a long trek toward Belgrade on foot to seek legal justice and bring his children back. This is a difficult watch as it deals with so many harsh realities and uncomfortable truths that plague Serbian society and that make living in this country a true daunting task.

Most of those dramatic elements worked as the movie for the most part depicted the problems of Serbia in a realistic, tragic manner. I am not just talking about poverty, which is here obviously heartbreaking to witness with that opening in particular being horrifying. The opening is so atrocious, but also unexpected and truly terrific that the rest of the movie never quite caught up with that great first sequence.

But going back to the themes, the film besides poverty also explores the lack of human empathy. Sometimes, the movie was over-the-top in its portrayal of horrible, selfish people lacking any emotion, but at least they countered that with some very beautiful instances of empathy, such as that man one who brings food to the protagonist. Also, that scene with the dog was grounded in reality and soul-crushing.

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Probably the biggest strength of the movie thematically speaking is the one that most do not talk about and that is the portrayal of authority. Not only do they showcase just how utterly terrible the administration in this country is, but they also depict the brutish, arrogant and even savage behavior exhibited from those people who are in power. Living in this country myself, I found that element incredibly realistic and relatable.

Still, Otac faced its problems when it comes to believability in some very strange sequences. The one with the wolves felt very fabricated and some moments on that road tried way too hard to emulate European and even American dramas set in the wild and road trip movies even, but those scenes never quite reached those levels of greatness. Instead, most of it was just fine. Again, I found a film about this very long travel on foot set in Serbia intriguing as I recognized the landscapes and the roads that characterize the country, but still those scenes could and should have been better, and the choice to film them without sound was not good.

But let’s get back to the strange scenes. I am of course talking about that ending. Again, I get what the director was trying to do, but it rang false to me as I did not believe that something like this would happen, and certainly not like it was showcased here with pure silence at display. That entire sequence was simply too weird and not in a good way.

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Otac is well shot and also very well acted by everybody. The standout is Goran Bogdan whose work here is believable and excellent. The dialogue is also pretty good, though sparse. The direction from Srdjan Golubovic is problematic. For every scene that he did right, he chose to do another scene all wrong, and the entire movie itself plays out like that. But overall, I expected much less from it, so I was ultimately pleasantly surprised.