Locarno review: Slet 1988 (2025)
Pardi di Domani
Corti d’Autore
As Marta Popivoda points out on a textual card at the beginning of her new short, “slet” is a word of Slavic origin meaning “flocking of birds”. Birds tend to organise in flocks to protect themselves from predators and to travel together to a better place. “Individuals often pay the toll. The flock survives”, she points out. In practice, however, “Slet” was a mass performance that celebrated the communist revolutions and the achievements of socialism in the Eastern Bloc countries in the second half of the last century.
In Yugoslavia, it was performed at the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) Stadium every May 25th, as the finale of the Relay of the Youth that was one of the signs of the people’s, especially the youth’s, dedication to Josip Broz Tito, his policies and his ways. The last “Slet” in Yugoslavia took place in 1988, and, according to the filmmaker, it was very different from the previous ones. It stands at the centre of Popivoda’s documentary Slet 1988, which has just premiered at the Corti d’autore section of Locarno’s short film programme.
After the info-card, Popivoda opens her film with an abstract imagery taken from the footage of the last Slet, from where we can recognise torches carried by people in darkness, interrupted by brief, sensory experimental interludes inserted by the editor Jelena Maksimović. We get to see an elderly woman exercising alone in a school gym and its pool, as the “regular” life goes by around the school located in New Belgrade’s brutalist projects called The Blocks. We also hear the excerpts from an audio diary of a teenage high school girl that starts as banal confessions about school obligations and taste in music, but gets more philosophical with each new entry.
It all culminates on the day of the last Slet, as we can realise the future we now know as a tragic past. And all the pieces of the puzzle come together with the original TV footage of the event that came at the very end of an era.
It is clear that Slet 1988 is a work of cinematic art where archival and newly filmed footage blend deftly with re-enactments that look and sound authentic, and the experimental parts that stimulate our synapses. Popivoda relies on her regular collaborators, like Maksimović and the talented cinematographer Ivan Marković, who has a special eye for detail regarding socialist architecture. The sound design by Vladimir Živković rounds the picture.
But more than that, Slet 1988 is an essay and a provocation of thoughts and speculations on the topic of Yugoslavia and its future that was not allowed to happen. Once the collectivist ideology moved away to make place for the individual artistic expression, which might be seen as a sign of freedom, the new collectivisms stepped in and hijacked the freedom. In times like this, watching this kind of movie might be a smart move, as it is so clear-eyed about the past that it might even be visionary regarding the future.
Year: 2025
Runtime: 22’ 15’’
Countries: Germany, Serbia, France
Language: Serbian
Directed by: Marta Popivoda
Written by: Marta Popivoda, Ana Vujanović
With: Sonja Vukićević, Divna Manojlović (voice), Marlena Marković
Cinematography by: Ivan Marković
Editing by: Jelena Maksimović
Sound design by: Vladimir Živković
Sound recording by: Dejan Kragulj
Sound by: Vladimir Živković, Simon Apostolou, Miloš Drndarević
Colourist: Ivan Marković
Produced by: Zsófi Lili Kovács, Jasmina Sijerčić, Marta Popivoda
Production companies: Fiskultura Films, Bocalupo Films, Theory at Work
