What is life like in a Serbian young offenders institution?
Being young today often seems to hold more
fear than hope. This atmosphere of despondency is particularly
prevalent in the largest juvenile correctional facility in the Balkans,
where Jovan Todorovic and his crew filmed the lives of the minors that
have been forgotten and sidelined by Serbian society. Juvenile,
which we're premiering on Dazed, documents life within a correctional
facility for the young adults and children who've been sent there. For
these young people, who range in age from 14-23, the outside world can
recede into an unfamiliar place – particularly given that the longest
court sentence that can be imposed is four years, a lifetime for any
restless young person who dreams of freedom.
Juvenile communicates the monotony and hopelessness of a
life lived removed from the outside world whilst showing how youth is a
universal concept, with the hopes and fears of the minors within the
facility being no different to those who live outside of it. But for all
that the subject matter might appear at first bleak – particularly
given the uncompromising visuals of the post-Soviet correctional
facility itself – Juvenile is a hopeful film. Watching it, you
believe that there might be a positive resolution and some sort of
redemption for these teenagers, many of whom hold on to religion as a
way of processing the reality of their life within the centre.
Though many of the young people portrayed in the film are likely to never fully escape a life of crime, Juvenile
maintains a candid and honest approach. This is a film in which the
young people are allowed to speak for themselves, given a voice without
editorialising and judgement. We see them playing, telling
Jesus-as-a-pothead jokes, smoking incessantly (almost all the young
people seem to permanently have a cigarette in hand, which underscores
the reality that much like those in adult correctional facilities, often
there's not much else to do but chainsmoke and dream of the outside
world). In order to achieve this closeness with the young people he
depicted, Todorovic and his crew spent months living within the
facility. By participating in their daily lives and not letting the
stories of their past saturate their portrayal in the film, Juvenile connects
with the teenagers on a more intimate level. The result is as raw as it
is captivating, capturing moments of dejection as much as instances of a
faith and hope that even a life within a facility can’t fully
extinguish.
