AllMovie

Serbian filmmaker Vladimir Perišić evokes a seismic moment in his nation’s past from the vulnerable perspective of a teenager in the riveting and personal drama Lost Country, which he based on his own experiences. Fifteen-year-old Stefan (Jovan Ginić, winner of the Rising Star Award at Cannes last year) begins to notice a harrowing chasm opening between the way he idealizes his mother (Jasna Đuričić) and how many of his fellow classmates and citizens have begun to see her in her role as the public spokesperson for Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian president ultimately convicted of war crimes committed during the Balkan Wars. Set amidst the 1996 protests that saw university students and opposition party members speaking out against electoral fraud conducted by Milošević’s Socialist Party, Perišić’s film functions as both a brutal reckoning with a historical moment that has clear parallels to today, and a compelling coming-of-age story under circumstances that young Stefan is only starting to comprehend.