“In a film where such heavy subject matter is at the center of consideration, it is a relief that there’s a sly, twisted sense of humour looming that refreshes the palate throughout.”

If it feels like every generation of adolescents is somehow more cruel to each other than the last, Miroslav Terzić’s 3 Weeks After, a depiction of a class trip of Serbian secondary school students visiting the Bulgarian Balkans, has some thoughts that might confirm this hypothesis. Taking the audience on what will be a guided meditation on the significance of personal and collective responsibility, a series of breadcrumbing begins in the first few minutes of the film. There are multiple instances of various teachers and classmates commenting on Tsotsa’s participation in this trip, revealing group dynamics and tensions. He is told by some that they are happy that he has decided to come; others seem annoyed, and allude to assurances that he would not be present. “What all matters is that we stick together,” one of the teachers muses. The first scene on the coach in motion immediately shows that neither of the two teachers supervising this class trip is able to maintain order over these high-strung secondary school students. Victoria, a teacher on mic, even apologizes: “Just because I’m holding the mic doesn’t mean I have more right to speak in public than you, but that’s the way it is.” As the camera pans towards the back of the bus, it shows that exactly zero students are taking anything she says seriously. Given what little respect these students have for the incompetent leadership of their chaperones, they very easily orchestrate a scheme to force a premature rest stop so that a much older boyfriend of one of the girls can sneak onto the bus with them. It is not long before the bus breaks down and the travelers are forced to lodge in a resort in the mountains, where the brewing conflict and tension between Tsotsa and the other students comes into focus.

As the film progresses, the thematic focus of 3 Weeks After displays how the aftermath of one student’s suicide three weeks earlier impacts this group, and it becomes a study of the politics of a small society. Tsotsa, and particularly how his peers treat him, takes center stage as he was apparently the only close friend of the group’s departed classmate Andrija. The other students are ruthless in their bullying of him: through no fault of his own, Tsotsa’s presence makes everyone uncomfortable, forcing their thoughts to return to what has happened, when everyone just wants to forget the whole thing. “These kids are disgusting,” Victoria laments to her colleague. “Each generation is creepier than the last. They are heartless, angry, evil.” And though this admission is evidence that the teachers recognize what is happening, they make little effort to intervene and protect Tsotsa, or to correct their pupils’ increasingly vile attitude towards Tsotsa and the dubious reasoning for their treatment of Andrija that contributed to his decision to end his own life.

Tsotsa’s heartache as he endures brutal bullying from the others quietly forms the emotional core of the film thanks to the compelling performance of its lead actor Jovan Ginić. He is particularly moving in a scene where he tearfully minimizes his suffering in a phone call to his parents, trying to reassure them of his wellbeing, another example of when adults should be seeing their cues to prioritize the safety of a minor. But it’s easier for them to turn a blind eye to a situation for which they have no simple solution. In a film where such heavy subject matter is at the center of consideration, it is a relief that there’s a sly, twisted sense of humour looming that refreshes the palate throughout. Casual banter between the students includes conversations about weight loss-inducing parasites, nose jobs, fat removal surgeries and betting strategies: all moments that speak to how the pressures of an adult world trickle down to this terminally online generation eager to be over the awkwardness of this stage in their lives. The ensemble of actors playing the students are uniformly charismatic and relish the opportunity to embody how nasty teenagers can be to one another.

3 Weeks After’s decision for us to bear witness to the increasingly shocking and inhumane manner in which even the young, without yet being totally corrupted by life, are able to treat each other has a purpose. These adolescents are perceptively pointing out the hypocrisy and failure of the adults who delude themselves into thinking that their own behaviour is somehow better than this. Leading by example or finding solutions to complex problems is never easy, but that makes it even more important for people who have power to do everything they can to protect those without.