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BERLINALE 2022 Panorama

Critique : Working Class Heroes

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- BERLINALE 2022 : Miloš Pušić formule un message punk, chargé de colère, à travers un film entre drame social, comédie sombre et thriller qui puise dans la poétique de Želimir Žilnik

Critique : Working Class Heroes
Boris Isaković, Mihajlo Pleskonjić et Stefan Beronja dans Working Class Heroes

Cet article est disponible en anglais.

Judging by the previous films by Serbian director Miloš Pušić, Withering [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film
]
and Autumn in My Street, no one would expect the raw, angry punch in the face of society that he delivers with his Berlinale Panorama title Working Class Heroes [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Miloš Pušić
fiche film
]
.

The society in question is Serbian, but this story could easily take place in many other countries. EFA winner Jasna Djuričić plays Lidija, the “PR” person of the construction and real-estate company Magnus Domus in the country's second biggest city, Novi Sad. In reality, she is basically the shrewd and cold-hearted enforcer and mistress of the scammer owner, Miki (Aleksandar Djurica). In the opening scene, she evicts a poor family from their substandard flat, and more evidence of their wrongdoing, enabled by the corruption and general disarray of the state institutions, follows before we meet our real heroes.

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This is a group of construction workers, working on a monumental, forgotten social housing project for Miki and Lidija. The several-stories-high, reinforced concrete building was probably part of a plan by a previous government, and in the Serbian construction (or indeed any) business, if there is no interested party to launder money, or they see another way to make it illegally, no one invests.

The ragtag group of six men, from the young, simple-minded Kid (Stefan Beronja) to the elderly boozer and pill-popper Mile (Mihajlo Pleskonjić) and their de facto leader Professor (Boris Isaković), have not been paid in ages and work without any protective gear or regulated hours. Foreman Braco (Predrag Momčilović) is there mostly as a mediator, tasked with keeping them in order. But Professor (highly educated people who have to take on menial jobs are a regular occurrence in Serbia) manages to organise them so that they successfully blackmail Lidija into giving them their salaries so they keep working. She and Miki are trying to get a successful businessman to sign a contract on the project, but when the job is not done the evening before the deadline, Kid and Professor are required to stay and finish it during the night.

The film initially feels almost like a documentary: the handheld, digital camera's image is flat, there seems to be very little colour grading, and DoP Aleksandar Ramadanović moves swiftly and often chaotically among the protagonists. But as it progresses, as the characters become more fully fledged and the social angle develops, it turns into a very dark drama with thriller and comedy elements.

Yes, comedy, but a very bitter one. Despite their camaraderie, the workers cruelly pick on each other, and a scene in which the group celebrates the meagre sum that Lidija has thrown at them, in a bare room at the construction site with a cheap folk singer, plays out like an alcohol-drenched nightmare out of the films by Yugoslav Black Wave legend Živojin Pavlović.

But if there is a filmmaker that Pušić taps into the most, it is his fellow Novi Sad citizen Želimir Žilnik: they have in common the mix of genres and actors and non-professionals, the just-take-the-camera-and-shoot approach, an affection for people on the margins of society, and the fiercely humanistic, anti-authoritarian stance.

There are also surprises in the film, from a raw emotional depth in two unexpected developments, to brutal scenes in which the workers hurt themselves intentionally in order to get anything out of Lidija. Even though the feature’s attitude is totally punk, the script that Pušić co-wrote with Dušan Spasojević and Ivan Knežević is intricate and full of contrasts.

Working Class Heroes is a production by Serbia's Altertise, and Greece's Heretic Outreach has the international rights.

(L'article continue plus bas - Inf. publicitaire)

(Traduit de l'anglais)

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