Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

''Beautiful villages burn beautifully, ugly villages are not more beautiful when they burn'' Not a lot of people know that. Pretty Village, Pretty Flame is about two boys from a village in Bosnia Herzegovina. They are afraid of the same things, curious about the same things. Neither of them wants to give in when they fight. Halil is a Muslim. Milan is a Serb. We meet them at three times in their life. In the crowded memories of childhood, around the ''Peace Tunnel'' in 1992 and at the military hospital in Belgrade in 1994. With quick-fire humour and a rich symbolic language the film conveys a feeling which is both warm and raw at the same time. The dialogue is brilliant and at times uncannily authentic. The film is dedicated to the film industry in a country that no longer exists. At the beginning of the film we see a newsreel from 1927: A tunnel between Bosnia and Herzegovina, the ''Brotherhood-Unity Tunnel'' is opened. We see political bigwigs, national anthems and a red, a very red silk ribbon. A monotonous propaganda voice proclaims that ''every tunnel symbolizes both our journey and the light at the end''. But history moved in another direction. And fifty years later all hell broke loose. This time the camera is aimed from the Serbian side. It focuses on Milan who is beaten by Halil in a playful basketball game on the first day of the war. Milan is the child who does not want to go into the demolished tunnel and meet the ''sleeping monster''. He is also the man who is fighting a battle in its profound darkness. The scenes melt into each other. The plot nibbles its way forward and makes the incomprehensible cruelty of war, apprehensible, almost sensible. People are fighting. Neighbour against neighbour, brother-in-law against brother-in-law, friend against friend, boy against boy. Occasionally man against man. These terror-stricken soldiers, drugged with spirits, fire and machine guns revenge injustices and create a new bloody European zone. Director Srdjan Dragojevic reveals the props of war in a cinematic Iight. We see how much we can hurt our nearest and dearest. How everyday things like potted plants, porcelain figures, popular songs and wallpaper become a second skin for those who have been flayed. Everything-or perhaps nothing - is sacred. The Serbians are, just like their ex-countrymen, a people of myths, broken dreams and sorrow. In the cynical game of war, where everyone is a loser, humour is a pure instinct for self-preservation. In this respect, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame is a distressingly well told story. H B

Premiärstatus
Skandinavisk premiär: Orig. titel
Lepa sela lepo gore: Medverkande
Dragan Bjelogrlic, Nikolo Kojo, Zoran Cvijanovic: Producent
Goran & Dragan Bjelogrlic: Manus
Nikola Pejakovic & Srdjan Dragojevic, based on a story by Vanja Bulic: Foto
Dusan Joksimovic: Musik
Aleksandr Sasha Habic: Talat språk
Serbian