[identities.]

Sasha is Dennis Todorovic‘ first film, starring Sascha Kekez, Predrag Bjelac, Zeljka Preksavec, Yvonne Yung Hee, Jasin Mjumjunov, Ljubisa Gruicic and Tim Bergmann.

Plot:
Sasha (Sascha Kekez) and his family return from Montenegro (where they’re originally from) to Germany (where they’ve been living for most of Sasha’s life). Sasha is looking forward to coming home, mostly because it means that he will see his piano teacher Gebhard (Tim Bergmann) again. But when Gebhard tells him that he will move to Vienna for a job, Sasha’s world quickly collapses and he’s faced with a few difficult choices.

Sasha was definitely my favorite film of the Identities festival. It’s funny, intelligent, engaging, has an incredibly charming cast and will just leave you grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the day, maybe even the week.

The film not only walks the line between shallow entertainment and thoughtful intelligence, it owns that fucking line. Which means that the movie is just as deep as you want it to be right that second. There are layers to uncover, but even if you want to stay at the surface, you’ll be perfectly entertained.

I really liked that the movie is not only about Sasha’s coming out, but also about coming out in a migrant family and about general identity issues that stem from being unrooted like that.

Todorovic is a wonderful author and director – his dialogue flows, he is funny without being ridiculous and he has an eye and the perfect timing for the relationships of his characters. Since that is only his first movie, it makes me very excited to see what comes next from him.

It helps of course that he has a wonderful cast to work with. Especially Sascha Kekez is all kinds of amazing. [And really cute.] Though I also enjoyed Yvonne Yung Hee and Ljubisa Gruicic who is basically Roberto Benigni’s doppelganger. And Predrag Bjelac. And Zeljka Preksavec. And Jasin Mjumjunov. Basically, I enjoyed everybody.

I also enjoyed pretty much everything else. :)

Summarising: You should definitely see it.