2001-2010 Drama Film Noir Serbia Srdan Golubovic

Srdan Golubovic – Klopka aka The Trap (2007)

adminMarch 15, 2012

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Mladen, an ordinary man, signs a pact with the devil in order to pay for the life-saving operation for his son and becomes a murderer. But the act soon starts to haunt him: keeping the secret from his wife forces him into a kind of emotional poker, and his conscience does not cooperate very long in his betrayal of his own moral standards. A “Balkan version of Crime and Punishment”, wrote director Srdan Golubović, set against the backdrop of a transition process gone awry: “a modern ‘film noir’ about post-Milosevic Serbia, where there is no more war, just a moral and existential desert.” Golubović vividly dissects personality transformations from the perspective of a confession, always showing great respect for his protagonists. With its distinctive language of images, which finds a style of its own between close-ups and the representation of urban architecture, the film reveals an artistic approach to the theme that points beyond empty metaphors to the personal quality of the story — a story whose pull can’t be resisted.
(Berlinale Catalogue)

The Trap is a film about an ordinary man forced to make a life-or-death decision about his own child. It tells the story of the protagonist’s moral dilemma: whether to save the life of his son by agreeing to kill someone else. It is about the moment that brings salvation to his own family, and suffering to another. It is about freedom of choice, which doesn’t really exist. The Trap is a very personal film, and in a way, the contemporary Balkan version of Crime and Punishment. It is about a crime that saves the life of the protagonist’s child, and the punishment that comes from within. It is about a man faced with two solutions – each leading to pain, guilt and misfortune. It is about a man in a moral and existential trap.
(Srdan Golubović)