Mihajlo Jevtic: Four Passports
For someone who for 15 years regularly have been visiting Belgrade, and who have been traveling Serbia South and North with local friends, it is upfront very interesting to see a film made by and about a man, film director Mihajlo Jevtic, who in first person and in a unpretentious, both humourous and sad, typically Serbian, I would say, of course a total simplification, tells the story of his young life in several countries as the title says, and yet at the same place, a place he is to leave to live in another country, where the working and thus material living conditions are better. I have met these considerations among younger Serbians again and again, so nothing new thematically for me.
So – contrary to the text of the serious and depressive synopsis on the website and on facebook, link below – I was happy to watch a film, on the background of the history of a country Yugoslavia that fell apart, full of warm feelings, a family film, whose members (love the father of the director) remember and reflect and get happy when grandchildren (from the side of the sister) arrive.
The film lives best, when father and son are together, playing with the camera, looking at s-8 material from their holidays in Rovinj, Croatia, a place the director Mihajlo goes back to – to bring back moving images to his family. In between the film brings some animation, which does not really bring extra value to a personal documentary that was nice and sweet to watch.
Serbia, Croatia, Germany, 2016, 83 mins.
