Carlston Za Ognjenku – Tears For Sale (Uros Stojanovic, 2008) Serbia:

Reviewed by Hrair Panossian. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2009.

When I sat down at the theatre, I saw a man that was wearing a very funny looking hat and was very goofy looking. When I later realized that this man was the director of the movie I immediately thought that this movie would be very weird and strange and guess what? It was!
When he told the audience that this was a documentary after the movie, I had to take a second look at the guide to see if this really was listed as a documentary, It wasn’t!

The movie Tears For Sale, takes place at a time after the 1st World War when 3/4 of the serbian male population were killed due to the war. We see two girls Ognjenka (played by Sonja Kolacaric) and Mala (played by Katarina Radivojevic) in a small town in Serbia where the entire population if the town are female. The women only have two ways of getting money: picking grapes from the mine filled vineyard or be fake griefers at funerals. They choose one person to pick the grapes after the person before gets blown up from the mine filled vineyard. Ognjenka and Mala had not been picked yet and had yet to be pleased by a man. After many shots of spider brandy, the two girls decide to go on a search for men to bring back to the village, meanwhile their grandma’s spirit is resurrected and will go back when the two sisters bring back the men for the village.

This very surreal story is more than just a movie. It is entertainment! It has many weird twists of erotica, fantasy and comedy all blended in to one great movie. The cinematograpy is perfect and the movie has a basic 3 act structure. To say that the movie is a documentary is a very different way of seeing it. I want to put it in the genre “Erotic Fantasy”. One omre thing that I would like to add is the wonderful music in the movie. The music was one of the best things in the film, the typical Serbo-croatian music that I hear at the home of many of my Croatian friends.

I recommend everyone to see this movie, if you aren’t afraid of a little erotic action. The actresses are amazing and I was really sad when the film was over. The goofy british accent of the director Uros Stojanovic at the Q&A really stood out and made me laugh many times, as did the movie.