Home Game

Home Game

Home Game - film still

VERDICT: Director Lidija Zelovic's main assets in the often powerfully meditative documentary 'Home Game' are her novelistic voice and strong writing.

What incredible luck that I ended up here, says Lidija Zelovic, director and protagonist of Home Game, an often powerfully meditative documentary chosen as one of the world premieres in competition at IDFA 2024. She is referring to the Netherlands as an ideal country, having come from Yugoslavia, a (now defunct) country with a history so fragmented and expansive that Zelovic knows better than to approach it.

In any case, her film is really about herself and her family, even as it swells to encompass the politics of the nations hosting the film’s subjects. Spliced in with Zelovic’s home videos are news segments discussing the unrest that seems to be unending in the Balkans. At one point, a broadcaster announces that Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia have agreed to end the war. But before this moment, Zelovic has included what seems like an ordinary conversation—but with heartbreaking consequences.

In the footage, a young soldier tells an interviewer that he is not exactly sure why he is fighting; all he knows is that some people want to leave, and that part of the war doesn’t want them to. All he really wants to do, he says, is to survive. While some deadly violence might await him, he informs the interviewer that three of his friends have died that morning. The officers, presumably giving the commands, are unscathed. It is scenes like this, juxtaposed with Zelovic’s family life, that make Home Game worth its runtime.

But the use of archives is not the film’s sole boon. Its main asset is the director’s writing—unadorned, potent, incantatory in its directness. She has taken the measure of her life, her family’s life, and her country’s life. It is a complex entity, as documentaries of this sort must be. It must help that Zelovic was a broadcaster; her youth is telling, when she tells us that while she was reading the news, she wasn’t exactly aware of all of its ramifications at the time. But ignorance has never protected anyone from the costs of war. Eventually, the Zelovics leave their Yugoslavia and end up in the Netherlands, at which point Zelovic, who tells the story mostly in third person, expresses her “incredible luck”.

This country she has ended up in has so few problems that Tanja, a famous Dutch hippo, makes the news. On delivering this particular bit of Dutch history, Zelovic’s novelistic semi-detached manner allows a hint of amusement in her voice. Which makes sense in a somewhat ironic way: Home Game wouldn’t be as important a document if it didn’t present aspects of the chaos of Yugoslavia. As people in the business of writing know, happiness writes white.

Anyway, Zelovic’s verdict on the Dutch soon unravels. An interview with the populist politician Pim Fortuyn foretells the trouble ahead. In the interview, Fortuyn is critical of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants.

(It is perhaps unintended, but it is worth considering that while Fortuyn was quite critical of the Moroccans and Turks who had come into the Netherlands, the Yugoslavs seem more welcome. It’s hard to not consider that this is commentary, even if unwitting, of how skin colour works in discussions of this sort. Early on in the documentary, we are told that Dutch people look at that part of their continent and say they are always fighting every few decades. Somehow that fighting doesn’t reach Dutch soil—or Dutch criticism.)

Fortuyn is killed before the elections. The filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, whose politics is similar to Fortuyn’s, is also killed. It’s not quite on the scale of what’s happening in the former Yugoslavia but, it appears, the Netherlands is not quite the peaceful haven anyone might have dreamed.

Back home, Zelovic’s father signals a fear that the murder of such a high-profile individual as Fortuyn was done by a person from Yugoslavia, proof that an outsider is always an outsider, especially in their own hearts. As for the Zelovic matriarch, the matter is straightforward: “Shut up and be happy it was a Dutchman and not a foreigner.”

Of course, the title of the documentary refers to a concept in sports, and football frequently mixes the geographical with the political. In one scene, the director’s kid plays football with his friends and a conversation involving which teams they support ensues. What teams they prefer, unsurprisingly, follow the wayward patterns of their family history. The Netherlands, which has given their forebears a life without the immediate fear of war and poverty, isn’t the unanimous pick for all of the boys. And it is not quite clear what the film’s protagonist feels about their choices.

Overall, Home Game isn’t one of those slick documentaries that immediately draws in every viewer. The visuals are far from striking and you are always aware that what you are watching is unvarnished. But for Europeans interested in European migration and in the dynamics of living in a new land, Zelovic’s documentary contains important questions about belonging. It is the viewer’s incredible luck that she doesn’t offer pat answers.

Director: Lidija Zelovic
Screenplay: Lidija Zelovic
Producer: Wout Conijn for Conijn Film
Co-producer: Lidija Zelovic for Zelovic Film
Cinematography: Lidija Zelovic, Sergej Goekjian, Maarten Kal, Moniek Wester Keegstra, Lola Mooij, Alexander Goekjian, Marinus Groothof
Editing: Uroš Maksimovic
Sound Design: Ranko Paukovic
Music: Jasper Boeke
Dutch Distribution: Cinema Delicatessen
Venue: IDFA (Competition)
In Dutch, Serbo-Croatian
98 min