The Undertaker
( Pogrebnik )

Dragan Nikolic
2013 - 52 min - HDCam - Couleur - Serbie

A Serbian named Bata works in his father-in-law's company "Drnda Internacional", an undertaker's business. Mr. Drnda started the company when he returned home from working as a laborer in Germany and Austria. It's now an international business with 26 hearses, which brings Serbians who died abroad back home, or repatriates tourists whose vacations in Serbia ended badly. At this point, the owner has limited his own activities to thinking up ads and determining the long-term corporate strategy. Bata drives back and forth between Eastern and Western Europe transporting various corpses. With an ever-gray sky, the hits of yesteryear on the radio and some heated exchanges with customs officers, he makes it back home, looking pretty calm and collected. But the trips and especially the human interaction take their toll on him. After all, undertakers have to blow off some steam, too. The camera remains focused on Bata the entire time, and we don't even get a glimpse of a dead body. As a result, this isn't a morbid tale of death, but rather an intimate portrait of an undertaker.