The Punishment

A spring day in Belgrade, 1999. The Punishment begins with a shot of a couple getting married somewhere in the city. Serbia was bombed for seventy- eight days. The film undertakes a documentary journey through Belgrade from NATO bombing through to millennium celebrations. It is a documentation of life in a desolate city, a portrait of growing hopelessness among the population, far removed from the standardized war coverage by the media. Goran Rebić lets playwrights and school children, philosophers, scientists, human rights activists, and combatants have their say, those who previously had no place in the reporting and war news.