Filmvisning: The Life and Death of a Prono Gang

Marko, a film graduate turned porn director, finds himself in trouble with his producer after a falling out. Opting to leave his position, he and his girlfriend assemble a team of misfits to form a travelling pornographic cabaret club. Though initially successful, an incident with the press puts them on the brink of financial ruin. It is then that Marko is approached by a German investor with a disturbing request: Film, and dramatise, the killing of volunteer victims. The opportunity offers both financial stability and room for Marko to employ his directorial artistry, but could it possibly be worth the price?

Writer-director Mladen Djordjević pulls from his experience with the Serbian porn industry, which he covered in his 2005 documentary Made in Serbia, stretching the subject into the darkest crevices of human behaviour. Released a year before the far more infamous A Serbian Film, and threading some similar ground, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang employs the scuzzy aesthetics and taboo subject matter associated with extreme cinema in order to portray the social climate of post-civil war Serbia. Dark, vile, and absurd, this is a road trip you may struggle to forget.

Mladen Djordjević

Serbia

2009

Blu-ray

112 minutes

Serbian language, English subtitles