Warning: This article contains discussion of rape portrayed in the film which some readers may find distressing
If you’ve never had the pleasure of watching A Serbian Film, you may count yourself lucky.
Released in 2010, it remains one of the most – if not the most – controversial movies of all time.
The exploitation horror was written by Aleksandar Radivojević and Srđan Spasojević, with the latter also taking the reins as director.
So sickening was the film’s contents it was been banned in 46 countries and the director of a Spanish film festival was even arrested for showing it.
It is seriously not for the faint-hearted.
The film follows Miloš, a semi-retired porn star who lives in Belgrade with his wife and six-year-old son.
Struggling for money since leaving the heat of his adult career behind him, he takes on one last porn gig.
But rather than this being an chance to make some easy money, Miloš is forced to perform a series of sinister and disturbing scenes in an orphanage, which involve a young child, but after being shown a video of a ‘doctor’ raping a newborn baby, he refuses to continue.
He then wakes up days later, with no recollection of what has happened.
Filled to the brim with stomach churning portrayals of torture, necrophilia, rape, and murder, it sees the main character drugged with ‘bull viagra’ and forced to have sex with anything put in front of him, including his own son.
Over a decade on from its release, the film continues to shock and repulse audiences in equal measure.
Speaking to LADbible, director Srđan Spasojević opened up about what has become one of the most talked about movies ever made.
“The idea of making the film was really honest and those emotions from deep inside,” he told us. “Like an emotional expression of life around us.”
The infamous horror film is banned in 46 countries. (Unearthed Films)
The main aim for Spasojević was for A Serbian Film to be authentic, saying: “We tried not to think about any possible consequences.”
Referencing the incredibly graphic scenes in the film, he claimed ‘political correctness was suffocating free art and free speech’ at the time, so he purposely made the film to challenge the conservative mindset of the public.
We asked Spasojević about the significance of centring the film around porn, and why he felt the need to include children in the sex scenes with the backdrop of an orphanage.
He highlighted that pornography ‘seemed normal’, as it correlated with social and cultural aspects in life.
“Why not a baker, why not a lawyer?” he suggested. “It would be all the same. The guy would end up in the same place, raped in the gutter. No-one cares.”
Putting children at the heart of the danger here, Spasojević said, shows how vulnerable the notion of ‘the family’, which is often described as ‘the core of society’, truly is.
“Humankind failed to create a nice place on this planet… when you have a family, it cannot survive on its own, it cannot win that battle – a family is influenced by everything around it,” he explained.
Srdjan Spasojević says that the film is his portrayal of society. (Unearthed Films)
So what about the people in the film who acted all this stuff out on camera? You would think that there would be a careful consideration for the impact such a divisive movie could have on their career?
Well, that certainly wasn’t the case for Sergej Trifunović, who plays the sadistic snuff porn director Vukumir in the production.
He admitted to us that he signed up without even reading the script first, after finding out Srđan Todorović, a big name in his native country, was the lead actor.
It was only when a fellow actor, who was also offered a part in the film, read it and ‘threw up twice’ before turning it down, told him to actually look at the script that he gave it a late night read and was utterly ‘disgusted’.
“I started to read A Serbian Film at five o’clock in the morning, and on red wine, it’s absolutely not the circumstances to read it,” he recalled.
“I felt so f***ing bad. I was like, ‘What the f** did I sign? Jesus Christ it’s so sick, how am I going to find myself in it?'”
There are a number of disturbing scenes that made headlines. (Unearthed Films)
However, after a phone call with his mum, he pushed on, and it turned out to be the right decision.
Trifunović said that Marilyn Manson was even a fan of the movie and wanted to meet him in LA as a result.
The first time the actor actually watched the film in its entirety was three days before this interview, as he ‘couldn’t’ get through it beforehand.
When asked about playing the twisted Vukumir, he revealed: “I had to find the switch – yeah, I had to [go] somewhere deep, deeper than I ever was…
“It was really hard, the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.”
He had to come to terms with what the movie was trying to achieve, and accepted that he was just one ‘part of the puzzle’, not the main focus of the film, and it went seamlessly from there.
One scene in particular that has left its mark on viewers saw a performer dressed as a doctor help a woman deliver her baby, before then raping it.
“(It’s) the most direct metaphor about how we feel living in today’s world,” Spasojević claimed, justifying its graphic brutality.
“The baby scene is just a feeling of ours, we had to do it, because that’s the most honest confession we have (in the film) – this is my cry for help.”
But following its release, not everyone saw the metaphor, or if they did, they didn’t agree with how it was portrayed.
As a result, the director of Sitges Film Festival, Angel Sala, was arrested and charged with exhibiting child pornography for screening it at a festival in 2011.
Angel Salas was arrested for screening the movie. (Unearthed Films)
The charges were later dropped, but branding the outrage ‘terrifying’, Spasojević compared it to a witch hunt from the Middle Ages.
“For months, we were writing statements saying that we didn’t kill anyone, we didn’t rape anyone on the on the set, we had contracts with parents of the kids and we showed videos from the set to prove the special effects,” he said.
“I did think it was like explaining if our work was witchcraft or not – were we going to be burned at the stake?”
Spasojević and one of the film’s producers were also arrested at 3am during a premiere in Munich after complaints ‘some heads had been cut off’.
He recalled: “Everything that happened to the lead character in the film, happened to the film itself.
“It was cut, it was destroyed. It was burned. It was censored, it was banned, so to show that everything is fine, you’re burning the piece of art.”
He concluded by highlighting that the film ‘is not a manual instruction’, giving people things to consider, not things to be ‘aroused’ by.
Trifunović labelled his performance in the piece, as well as the film itself, as ‘really crazy’, summing up the themes of the film simply: “It’s as sick as the society we live in. I mean, we live in a sick society.”
The director said every ‘reflection’ of the world and society is a ‘false perfect picture’, and A Serbian Film doesn’t conform to that as ‘every film wants to be the same’ nowadays.
His only hope is that someday people will finally get it.
“Maybe in 30 or 50 years, better times will come for A Serbian Film,” Spasojević added. “But then again, maybe there are parts that will make it taboo forever. So who knows?”