“The Service”
The Jury’s Statement: An obscure yet intriguing story of what could have been. We felt the simple animation style book-ended with archive footage created a whole package that felt true to the type of stream-of-consciousness that might come through in a letter to a long lost friend. Yours Sincerely, the SAFF jurors.
Set in 1960s Yugoslavia, this atmospheric historical drama follows two national security officers who are sent to a remote and impoverished female monastery in search of a suspected monk. Their arrival disrupts the fragile stillness of the convent, bringing political suspicion and state power into a place defined by isolation, poverty, and faith.
As the investigation unfolds, the film explores themes of surveillance, authority, religion, and ideological tension under a repressive system. Blending historical intrigue with psychological drama, it offers a compelling portrait of fear, secrecy, and the collision between the sacred and the political in socialist Yugoslavia.
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Andrej Sepetkovski, born in 1974, is a Serbian actor, writer, director, and screenwriter with a distinguished career in theatre, film, and television. He graduated top of his class in acting from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade in 1998 and has since become a prominent figure in Serbian performing arts.
Over the course of his career, he has performed more than 50 roles in Serbia’s leading theatres, alongside major roles in 20 films and more than 30 TV series. As a writer and creator, he has written six plays—three of which were staged in Belgrade—and directed two of them. He has also written scripts for two television series and four feature films. Sepetkovski is the creator and screenwriter of the TV series Walking with a Lion, produced by Telekom, which won the Golden Antenna Award for Best Creator at the 2023 FEDIS Festival and was later acquired by HBO. He is also the screenwriter of The World is Beautiful, which won the Audience Award at the 2022 Film Script Festival in Vrnjačka Banja.