Dara of Jasenovac, Serbia’s submission for the 2021 International Film Oscar, is a one-dimensional story set in a little-known concentration camp.
At this point, it’s a tried-and-true adage that if a filmmaker wants to receive awards attention, they should make a movie about the Holocaust. Undeniably, there have been some outstanding films about the Holocaust over the years, such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist, that interrogate and thoughtfully examine the tragedy of this historical event. But that leaves many, many more that seem to exist for cynical reasons. Unfortunately, despite being Serbia’s official selection for the Oscar’s International Film race this year, Dara of Jasenovac falls into the latter category.
The film is told largely from the perspective of the title character, a 10-year-old Serbian girl named Dara Ili? (Biljana ?eki?), who along with her mother and two brothers is taken to a concentration camp complex called Jasenovac in Croatia during World War II. Unlike the other concentration camps across Europe that were run by Germans, Jasenovac was run by Croatia’s fascist Ustaše government, and while they imprisoned and murdered Jews and Roma people there, they also followed their own agenda, imprisoning and murdering ethnic Serbs. The film portrays the overwhelming brutality of the camps and the wanton violence the Ustaše engaged in.