Other Side of Everything, The

Synopsis

Having burst onto the filmmaking scene with Cinema Komunisto (2010), her feature-length exposé of the ties between the movie industry of the former Yugoslavia and that country’s authoritarian regime prior to President Tito’s death in 1980, director Mila Turajlic returns with a more intimate — but no less-sweeping — look at her own family’s entrenchment in political events. Focusing on her mother, Srbijanka, a former professor at Belgrade University whose decades-long commitment to socially progressive causes would be an inspiration to any activist today, The Other Side of Everything brings together personal memory and public history to quietly devastating effect. Set largely within a single space (that of Srbijanka’s home, which was partitioned by the Communist government decades ago and left in a state of internal division after the rise of Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s), this film explodes the literal and figurative walls that might otherwise contain its firebrand protagonist, giving her an opportunity to talk back to Serbian nationalists who have labeled her a “traitor” and to government officials who once subjected her to state surveillance. As the winner of the prestigious Best Feature-Length Documentary Award at last year’s IDFA (the world’s largest festival devoted to nonfiction cinema), The Other Side of Everything earns its many accolades by keeping the past alive and reminding audiences that the hard-earned right to protest — to raise one’s voice against ruling forces — is essential to democracy.