Made in Serbia (2005)

Directed by: Mladen Djordjevic | 97 minutes | documentary

Serbia is not easily associated with porn. Neither did director Mladen Djordjevic, so he decided to delve deep (sorry for the less subtle choice of words) into the country’s sex industry and dedicate a documentary to this industry. The result is ‘Made In Serbia’. The result cannot be called exciting.

A good documentary should leave you numb/touched/sad/happy afterwards. That’s called eliciting emotions. ‘Made In Serbia’ leaves you indifferent. That has to do with the boring main characters who talk without intonation or who have rather dubious motives. You can’t (or don’t want to) put yourself in their mindset. An ex-bodyguard who decides to become a porn producer and make the ‘first good Serbian porn film’ does not capture the imagination. If you then see the best man bored looking at a TV to do ‘research’ into the current sex experiences of other horny cousins, that is especially irritating. The best man talks very monotonously about the images he sees.

Porn is a shadowy area. Millions of people watch it, but are silent about it. There is a taboo about this branch of film. What possesses the actors? They use their body as a machine or have it used as a machine. What’s on their minds? Who are these people? Intriguing questions that go unanswered. At least not in this documentary.

What does this documentary have to offer? Not much. Images of talking heads, bored looks and short fragments of porn (where the bushes of pubic hair abound). All of this is rendered in coarse grain and looks like a VHS cassette that has been on it for a few years. Not very attractive. So quickly forgotten.