On the Main Program Author's Film Festival - FAF tonight, November 26, is the Serbian premiere shooting The disappearance of Josef Mengele by the Russian director Kirill Serebrenikov, whose co-producer is Miloš Đukelić, i.e. "Red Production" from Belgrade. The film was based on the book of the same name by Olivier Guez, and tells the story of the last years of the notorious Nazi doctor, who spent his escape from Paraguay to the Brazilian forests.
Last year, a film by Kirill Serebrenikov was screened at the FAF Limonov, ballad after being part of the Main Program in Cannes. I The disappearance of Josef Mengele comes to Belgrade after the Cannes Festival and a series of other festivals. The case wanted it to be right at the height of the topicality of the story about NIS and Russia.
A film about the consequences of misconceptions
Miloš Đukelić tells "Vreme" that "it's always a good time for a good film. Perhaps it's even more interesting now to have an insight into the artistic experience of the world from someone originally from Russia. Of course, this film has nothing to do with NIS and Gazprom, but it certainly has to do with us as people in a time of turbulence."
He explains that the film "although it deals with the time during and after the Second World War, tells a universal story about the consequences of delusions, the superficiality of extremism and the lack of empathy. About the crime of conviction to which a person is prone no matter how educated he is, about losing ourselves when we become criminals even if we remain apparently alive, that there is no escape from ourselves even if we escape from the hands of justice. Crime kills both the criminal and the victim. In today's moment when anti-Semitism is present again, in the time of outrage where we forget about empathy and when we tend to justify crimes with a higher purpose, this is the right time for this film".
Photo: Andrej StrokinsPart of the Serbian crew filming in Uruguay
"This film tells how impossible it is to live without love and with hate. A disturbing and questioning work, but definitely useful and artistically valuable. Therefore, let's all return to essential human values while we still can," says Miloš Đukelić.
Kiril Serebrenikov, who is both a theater and film director, directed a play in Belgrade two years ago. Ordinary story, as the first performance of his "Gogol Center" after it was closed in Moscow. This is where the professional collaboration between him and Miloš Đukelić begins.
About Kirill Serebrenikov, he says that "he is a very specific director who now lives in Germany in a kind of, voluntary or not, exile from his homeland after he was arrested and then under house arrest in Moscow around 2017. He is a Russian director who loves his country of origin and is an important author that Russians are proud of. And he does not give that up. Like many from the former Soviet Union, in addition to Russian, he also carries heritage and cultural roots from his father of a Russian Jew and a Ukrainian mother. His grandfather was a director and screenwriter who worked in Moldova and has the honor of a cultural worker of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Kirill is now also a German director who has just made a film in French."
Instead of FEST, the film is at FAF
The disappearance of Josef Mengele was included in the program that Miša Mogorović, the selector of this year's Fest, presented to the Board of that festival, which adopted it. Miloš Đukelić is one of the members of the Fest Board.
"As the Fest will not be held this year, it is the right decision for the film to be part of the main program of FAF. I have already arranged the arrival of authors and actors for the Fest, but..."
Đukelić believes that "it is a great pity that there will be no Festa this year".
"I feel bad about that. I personally had a traumatic experience when the Fest was not held in '93 and '94 due to sanctions. However, I want to believe that this skipped year is a combination of various bad circumstances and I am worried that it is not a prediction that the 90s are coming. I hope that it is not and that my children will not have the opportunity to live the 90s. Otherwise, it seems to me that everyone loves the Fest and understands that we must save and preserve it."
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