Logbook_Serbistan

Želimir Žilnik, a key member of the radical Yugoslav Black Wave film movement and a pioneer of the docudrama form, has made politically engaged films for over five decades, most recently focused on the struggles of undocumented immigrants and refugees. In Logbook_Serbistan, he works with refugees fleeing war, poverty, and hopelessness in North Africa and the Middle East, who, as protagonists in his film, enact their stories of seeking asylum. Most hope to travel from Serbia to countries in the European Union, from which Serbia, ironically, is also excluded. Depicting life both in overwhelmed refugee centers and on the road headed west, Žilnik’s potent mix of fiction and nonfiction details a complex social and political reality from a human perspective.