Izuzeti – review

In 2020, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia passed the “Law on Establishing Facts on the Status of Newborns Suspected to Have Disappeared from Maternity Wards in the Republic of Serbia.” This law was introduced following the persistent demands of numerous parents, gathered in various associations, who have been advocating for the truth about the fate of hundreds of newborns they believe were abducted from maternity wards in Serbia over the past decades.

According to their suspicions, from the 1960s to the present day, numerous babies have been declared dead under unclear circumstances, often without the issuance of death certificates or other mandatory documentation. Two years after the law was enacted, 761 requests were submitted for determining the status of these children. During that time, no court has confirmed that any of the missing children are alive, while only the Higher Court in Niš has officially determined the deaths of a small number of them.

What should be one of the happiest moments in a parent’s life thus turns into an unending agony of uncertainty and doubt. This is a story familiar to many in Serbia, yet one that has not received the attention it deserves. Even more alarming is the implication that such abductions require an extensive network of corrupt administrators, doctors, and police officials.
Đorđe Petrović crafts a compelling artistic response to this tragic narrative. In his play “Izuzeti”, parents testify before an investigative committee. The drama unfolds before the audience in the form of a thriller, where theatrical imagination, rendered in a realistic key, explores the suffering of parents, systemic corruption, and moral dilemmas. Rather than merely reproducing reality, the play dissects, analyzes, and reinterprets it through a fictional story deeply inspired by real testimonies and conjectures.

Director Mia Knežević in Sombor National Theatre recognizes and amplifies the thriller-like nature of Petrović’s drama, constructing a theatrical language in which tension and uncertainty serve as the play’s driving force. The production operates as an investigation – not in a legal sense, but a theatrical one. The audience is not a passive witness but an active participant in the pursuit of a truth that the judiciary has systematically evaded for years. Knežević does not merely reenact the cases of missing babies; she creates a stage space in which the audience feels the weight of unresolved fates.

Scenographer Daniela Dimitrovska designs a set that evokes the coldness of institutional bureaucracy: a waiting room symbolizes the prolonged agony of uncertainty, while an isolated, glass-walled office stands as a metaphor for the unapproachable, opaque system. This office, frequently empty, becomes a space where sinister plans unfold when occupied. Two doors lead into an unseen realm – operating rooms, important piece of a criminal network. Cold white lighting heightens the sense of an inhumane environment. This visual aesthetic reinforces the play’s narrative structure, in which the boundaries between memory, confession, and reconstruction continually shift. Knežević employs sharp transitions between scenes to mimic the rhythm of an interrogation – each statement is a potential turning point, each pause a part of the complex search for answers. Even the auditorium itself is integrated into the staging, dissolving the boundary between performance and spectatorship.

The cast approaches the material with restraint, avoiding excessive emotional dramatization. Instead, they strike a delicate balance between the demands of the thriller genre, immersive characterization, and a socially engaged responsibility toward the issue at hand. This lends the production an additional gravity, aligning perfectly with the high artistic and professional standards regularly demonstrated by the ensemble of the National Theatre in Sombor.

Given this level of ensemble work, singling out individual performances is challenging. Each actor in the ten-member cast faces the difficult task of convincingly portraying characters grappling with pain and the search for justice, or the weight of complicity. Particularly striking is Ana Rudakijević as Nevena, a surgeon who demands bone marrow for her ill son from Danka, the mother of a dying patient. Nevena is unaware that the man on her operating table is also hers, a baby stolen from her years before. Rudakijević masterfully transitions from a ruthless doctor to a victim mother shattered by loss. Equally compelling is Ivana V. Jovanović as Danka, whose moral trajectory is inverted: initially appearing as a grieving mother, she is ultimately revealed to be complicit in baby trafficking, aided by her father, a corrupt retired police officer. Nemanja Bakić delivers a gripping performance as a young gynecologist determined to expose the criminal network but becomes so entangled in its machinations that he, too, is ensnared. Miloš Lazić, as Mitar, embodies one of the masterminds behind the scheme – a man who destroys families while meticulously safeguarding his own.

Each of these characters teeters on the edge of despair, yet the performances never slip into pathos. Instead, they remain within the realm of internal struggle – the tension between justice and resignation.

Petrović’s exceptional dramaturgy and Knežević’s directorial vision ensure that the story of missing babies is not perceived merely as a series of isolated tragedies but as a systemic phenomenon that exposes the mechanisms of corruption, manipulation, and moral disintegration within society. Just as in the real world, where the truth about these cases remains elusive, buried beneath bureaucratic obfuscation, so too does the play weave a web of lies, fear, and abuses of power – gradually unravelling, but never completely.

What „Izuzeti“ accomplishes is not simply an artistic reconstruction of a criminal operation but a recognition of its broader implications: a symptom of a deeper societal malaise. The play’s theatrical language cultivates a sense of uncertainty and suspense that mirrors the lived reality of families who have spent decades searching for answers. By interlacing personal tragedies with systemic injustice, the production makes it clear that any attempt to confront the past is simultaneously a struggle against the present – for the institutions that suppress the truth are not relics of a bygone era but integral to a continuum of impunity.

In this sense, the play offers no catharsis, nor does it attempt to deliver a final judgment. Instead, „Izuzeti“ forces its audience to experience the same frustration and moral unease that torment the parents of the stolen children. By doing so, it transforms one of Serbia’s darkest contemporary realities into a powerful theatrical act – one that demands not only emotional engagement but a deeper contemplation of a society that allows such crimes to persist, unpunished, for generations.

Source: Seestage