Serbian Epics

‘Women don’t wage wars’, Radovan Karadzic’s mother says when her son comes to visit her and tells her about the military situation in Bosnia. A little later, SERBIAN EPICS shows a meeting of the Bosnian-Serbian war cabinet, in which the now notorious Ratko Mladic and Biljana Plavcic are seated. Initially, the tone of this portrait of Karadzic - psychiatrist, poet, businessman and leader of the Bosnian Serbs - is light-hearted, but gradually a shady world of power and delusion emerges. Without comment, with an almost anthropological eye, director Pawel Pawlikowski observes the besiegers of Sarajevo. The Serbian cultural heritage - centuries-old songs and poems - is used to justify the new ethnic struggle, and Karadzic loves to recite poetry.