Bahrudin Bato Čengić raises questions of crime, punishment, family and responsibility to an existential level as he probes the inner world of the incarcerated. Following the life inside a prison facility the film is built audiovisually: footsteps and metal clinks, a minimalist score, and non-diegetic voiceover form the soundscape while a tracking camera scans body language, focusing on the back of heads, hands, feet, figures in motion, and objects within space. The narrator asks questions, demands, and admonishes the prisoners. If Osmanli hinted at it, Čengić makes the voice of conscience a character. Furthermore, Čengić – rather than seeking a social critique of the prison system – is concerned with the more intricate study of the internal prison in(to) which man locks himself through crime and how this leads to a loss of personhood. This results in the film’s powerful visual deletion of the human face. Čovjek bez lica announces the director’s unique cinema and makes for one of the all-time great short films.

Mina Radović