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Like the MOSTRA Brazilian Film Series, the Chicago Serbian Film Fest, which takes place this Friday through Sunday at the Muvico Theatres in Rosemont, is less of a cinematic event than a lesson in foreign history. Four of the six selections deal directly with Serbia’s past, and the two that don’t (the dramas Circles and State) center on the theme of atoning for past transgressions. The legacy of World War II hangs over Ravana Gora and When Day Breaks, which screen on Sunday at 7:15 PM and 8:30 PM respectively. The first is part of a TV miniseries about guerilla warfare between German collaborators and Serbian partisans; the second is a recent feature about a retired music professor who discovers his parents died in a Nazi concentration camp. Falsifier, screening Friday at 9 PM, takes place during the 1960s (“the beginning of the end of a grand illusion called Yugoslavia,” per the festival programmers) and tells the story of a forger of high school diplomas who gets into trouble with the Tito regime.
