So I generally tend to view these movies with as much benefit of the doubt as possible, as they represent very real and very sensitive topics.

About the movie’s cinematography:

This is just my opinion of it as a movie.

The positive: They don’t downplay the violence of Jasenovac. I think the historicity was done well.

The ok: The baby saving part was pretty ok. But not as impactful.

Story is not that good. Protagonist feels less like a character and more as…there. Like even during her escape plan, she just doesn’t have much agency.

The negative: No Roma, Jews, Bosniak, Croats or other ethnicities/political prisoners that were interned, besides Serbs. And I know a Jewish character does appear but at the very very end.

Characters are pretty one dimensional. Besides Dara, they all just exist to do one thing and thats it. This comes up in the next points.

Generally nothing about the Ustase. Like I get it, they were evil. We became aware of this as early as the train scene. But why do they do it? Like villain motivations are key to the narrative. I came out thinking the Ustasi might as well be vampires by the end of this, since nothing truly explains why they’re bloodthirsty.

The violence of the movie, however accurate, is the main narrative device for the villains. But here’s the thing, it stops being a shocking turn of events and is just a norm in the movie. By this point it becomes a snuff piece a la Passion of the Christ or a Serbian film. A violent act happens, the characters react to the violence but we and the characters don’t really get to process it. The violence is persistent and loses its impact since we move on from one to the other. Like I said, characters in this film feel wooden and it’s probably because of this factor.

Unlike in other war movies like Schindler’s List where we actually get to have moments where we get to feel the impact afterwards. Like the girl on the red coat. We meet the villain, Goeth, and realize how deranged the Nazis are. The story truly shows the horror of the war with minimal violence, yet bigger impact. You get out of it with a genuine understanding of the violence, victims and perpetrators. Somethings this movie failed by a long shot.

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Is this movie propaganda?

Yes. It absolutely is.

As I explained in the cinematography portion. It doesn’t let the audience do its due diligence and understand the conflict in a deep and profound way and just shows visceral war violence perpetrated by the bad guys towards a specific group. There is no attempt to show to give us an understanding of Jasenovac or why the Ustase were derranged and evil. It just communicates to the audience that “the Ustasi are evil and look at what they did to innocent Serbs.” This move enforces an inevitable “us vs them mentality” that just doesn’t help anyone.

Not saying that the impact of Jasenovac on Serbs should be lessened, far from it. But rather understand this horror and contextualize it. Other films have done so better than this one. It’s a introspection on how the audience’s beliefs should be challenged. In this case both Serbian and Croatian ones, as this movie could have challenged the beliefs of both sides in a meaningful way. For Croats it could have been a good way for them to understand the right-wing elements of their society. For Serbs a good way to understand how other people view them similar to the Ustase.