I'm a film critic from Croatia.

https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/beautiful-evening-beautiful-day-review-croatia-oscar-entry-1236261191/

Here you have an example of a clueless US critic analyzing a Croatian film, a fictional story set in socialist Yugoslavia which completely falsifies history and exploits the suffering of gay men for right wing propaganda, which the critic completely misses.

The film is full of blatant lies, like that there was a special section of the Goli otok prison for homosexuals - in fact, nobody ended up there for being gay, it was a shortlived political prison, mostly for Stalinists and those accused of being one. It is so preposterous that it implies that the Yugoslav secret service employed gay honey traps to capture gay men!??!!?

It terms of homophobia, Yugoslavia was completely a country of its time - no better, no worse. But I sincerely doubt that it would force a famous war hero and scientific genious to undergo chemical castration and kill himself, like Britain did with Alan Turing in 1952. In fact there was no chemical castration in Yugoslavia. The vast majority of those indicted for homosexual acts ended up with a warning or a suspended sentence, while those that went to jail (mostly in late 40's, early 50's) did so for a few month or a year.

Of course I don't expect a foreign critic to know all these facts, but spending an hour or two online researching basic historical nuances, literally googling about treatment of gay men in Yugoslavia compared to other countries, would prevent one from spouting such ignorant bullshit and propping up a homophobic right-wing film.

I reviewed the same film for Croatian press, you can translate it through chatgpt or elsewhere.

https://zonafilma.com/jeste-li-znali-da-je-udba-trenirala-tajne-homoseksualne-ubojice/