Scenes with My Father

Biserka Šuran was two when her family fled the former Yugoslavia. At the time, her father thought that their youngest daughter would be the least affected by this sudden departure. In her directorial debut, Šuran enters into a conversation with her father about their shared past, the history of the Balkans and what it means for their identity.

The dialogues take place on a sober theater set laid out in an abandoned factory. Although some scenes are staged, the filmmaker and her father don’t try to convince you of their acting skills. Instead, they use the minimalist decor as a means to conceal their unease in this exploration, which is quite uncomfortable for both of them—for the daughter because she has never asked these questions before, and for the father because he has not learned how to answer them. But the answers do come.

The filmmaker succeeds in taking you on a journey through her family history while raising questions about Europe as a construct, in what feels like an enviable exercise that many viewers might like to emulate with a parent.