“A film that is as blisteringly funny as it is genuinely moving.”

Every family has that one eccentric relative, whether in terms of direct family members or more distant relations, who tends to become known for their peculiarities across the entire clan. In the case of Bojana Novaković, it is her maternal aunt Gordana, one of her mother’s many sisters, but surprisingly the one who factored the least into her life. Here Novaković, who has a relatively strong body of work as an actor, turns her attention to the other side of the camera. She sets out to explore the trials and tribulations of Gordana by taking a trip to Serbia (the country in which she was born before her family relocated to Australia when she was a child), with the intention of spending some time with her aunt. She hopes to get to know her as more than just a face in the photographs and videos that have been carefully curated in such a way that she begins to realise there may be a reason why Gordana was never a major part of her childhood. What follows is The Forbidden Aunt, a delightfully unusual documentary (or perhaps visual essay is a more appropriate term), in which the director takes a physical and psychological journey back to her homeland, telling the story of becoming reacquainted with someone who has grown into an almost folkloric figure. She peers behind the mystique that has enveloped Gordana for decades, and which she is desperate to understand, if not dismantle entirely, with this intriguing account of one of the most original individuals the audience is ever likely to encounter.

The Forbidden Aunt is a film that has dual purposes. The first is to paint a portrait of Gordana, the aunt who has fascinated the director for quite literally her entire life. Novaković acknowledges that their interactions were sparse, as her family left Serbia (which was still part of the united Yugoslavia at the time) in her early childhood, meaning that whatever memories she formed with Gordana were when she was very young, and that most of her knowledge comes from home videos and stories by people who knew her far more intimately. This leads the director to try unravelling the family mythology that surrounds her aunt, to get to know someone with whom she has developed an unconventional bond, the distance between them making the mission even more intriguing. From here she proceeds directly into the second intention behind the film, to understand precisely why her aunt was never allowed to be a notable presence in her life, regardless of their bond during those formative years of childhood, the memories of which Novaković uses as the basis for this endeavour. There are no stunning revelations about why the director’s family tried to keep their distance from Gordana, and it can essentially be reduced to a case of disagreement between their different lifestyles. However, there is still much to be revealed, and while most of what makes The Forbidden Aunt interesting is the search rather than the answers, the journey through the growing connection between these two women makes for incredibly captivating viewing.

From the film’s first moments we agree that, despite being completely unknown to anyone outside the director’s family and the community depicted here, Gordana is a fascinating presence and someone we are eager to know. This is not only due to her larger-than-life personality, but also the film’s methods of telling her story. The Forbidden Aunt seems relatively conventional on the surface, a well-crafted profile of an intriguing individual whose life has been spent in vibrant opposition to social conventions. She teeters somewhere between beloved eccentric and enigmatic outsider, which the director explores from the inside out, trying to leap into the mind of her beloved but evidently controversial aunt. The film is a tonal miracle, since it starts with an outrageously funny vignette that establishes what we imagine the tone will be (and which is maintained for the most part), but over time gradually reveals itself to be far deeper, particularly when it sets out to expose the deep-seated familial tensions and attempts to uncover the secrets between these people. It finds both humour and melancholy in unconventional places, going in several different directions while also maintaining the same destination. While it may not get there in the way we expect, the film’s ability to be exceptionally entertaining, while also not being afraid to approach more serious territory when it makes sense to the subject matter, is precisely what gives The Forbidden Aunt such a compelling identity, handling the more complex emotions with sensitivity and nuance.

By the time we reach the end of The Forbidden Aunt (at a shockingly brisk 84 minutes, one of the rare films that makes us yearn to spend more time with the characters), there are many lessons to take away from this story. However, perhaps the most significant is what can be summarised as the overall thesis statement of the film: we’d all be lucky to have our own Aunt Gordana in our lives, a carefree spirit who makes her own rules, and even at the most difficult times manages to find optimism in every situation, regardless of how challenging it may be. The film emerges from the interplay between tenderness and hostility (depending on whose perspective is in focus at a given moment), flourishing into a moving portrait of a woman who exists completely at liberty, never following the rules or abiding by social conventions, but living an avant-garde life. Meanwhile, she is also working through past trauma and actively trying to resolve the dormant tensions that simmer beneath the surface of a relatively normal family. The film is a love letter to those who make life interesting and captivating, becoming a playful tribute to a social holdout, though certainly not without her imperfections. Gordana becomes the subject of a three-dimensional character study told with candour and affection by a director who challenges herself to tackle some intimidating themes without growing too overwrought in the process. All this ultimately leads to an enthralling work that explores womanhood across several generations and multiple continents, told through the perspective of a truly charismatic protagonist, in a film that is as blisteringly funny as it is genuinely moving.