In the film Totally Personal the director recalls the years he spent in Bosnia and Hercegovina. With his distinctive humour he relates in this playful documentary different stories from childhood in Tito's Yugoslavia and experiences from the war that led to the country's break-up.
Nedžad Begović evokes the bell scene in Tarkovski's Andrey Rublyov and declares that he too wants to create masterpieces, to cast his bell. In the end he spends a great deal of time complaining about the lack of money.
The first-person film narrative is based on detailed observation of the director's family. His wife has long known that he's going to spend everything on his dreams. Their daughters, parents, and relatives become involuntary heroes in this satirical personal essay, which in its own way describes the experience of war. What were they fighting for, we ask, as we watch large soap bubbles floating among the ruins.
The film was made without any crew or equipment: just the director and his camera. Many of the bizarre occurrences represent a kind of privatised history, one, however, that allows the director to contrive various remarkable theories about how the world operates, for example, that the size of a person's index finger is directly proportional to the size of their nostrils.
An entertainer struggling in the kitchen? An amusing hysteric? Nedžad Begović, the director of animated films and TV shows for children, can be everything. Totally Personal is his feature documentary debut.
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