Review by Fernando Figueroa.

Now we can understand the silent scandal surrounding this interesting work, which is nothing more than a behind-the-scenes look at the recruitment and training (if you want to call it that, you’ll see why) of the Slovenskí Branci paramilitary group. Can anyone argue that hate speech and unquestionable justification of violence are justified when they come from armed commandos like these, with expressions as childish as they are bland in relation to their mission? A sister or girlfriend watches the boys’ military routines while eating a baguette and surfing on her mobile phone five metres away from them. In other words, the leader or commander of the group, Peter Svrcek, authorised director Jan Gebert to film their training routines, including the selection of recruits. This is hardly surprising when you consider that Svrcek is more concerned about becoming the most famous member of his family, as he boasts on TV while listening to a report on the growth of such groups.

The director covered and edited nearly three years of these irregular training sessions and routines, but also the departure of a group of them under Peter’s command, showing their uncontrollable antisocial and primarily racist temperament when several of them spot Muslim migrants, whom they shout insults at and plan to hunt down at another time when the police are not around. Speaking of police, while they are practising, they attract the attention of neighbours because they are armed, and the police arrive and question Peter, reprimanding him for wearing military uniforms and army and state insignia. But they do not arrest him. When he returns to the other young people, he tells them that he had to justify his support for Vladimir Putin, and they all burst out laughing.

The scandal I referred to above does not revolve around the fact that after authorising the director to film all kinds of intimate scenes of the shock group, Peter Svrcek threatened to file a complaint against Gebert for disagreeing with this documentary, despite the fact that they had been working together for more than three years without any problems. No. The scandal has to do with the attack on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was shot five times on 14 May 2024, in which one or more former members of Slovenskí Branci were involved. The film glorifies and trivialises gratuitous and authoritarian power and the pernicious cult of personality under slogans of clear violence. During the documentary, Peter reserves the right to accept and promote himself from the level or position of a simple aspirant to that of a paramilitary officer, and later warns that he will be the leader for life and will appoint those who are loyal to him.

For now, he promotes a handful of his 17 enthusiastic pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine supporters, among them the youngest, Adam Sero, who is soon promoted and seen in the following scenes surfing the web in search of automatic weapons for exclusive use by the army. Scene change, then we see Peter at the seminar ‘This is not a game’ debating with other comrades about the necessary measures and their objectives, and later we see him checking social media for his photo and the poses of his movement as if he were a boy scout proud of his work and collaborative training with the use of rifles and disciplinary measures. Meanwhile, the police were about to arrest a couple of his members for placing invitation and recruitment flyers in some parts of the city centre without government permission. The narcissistic leader learns his lesson and obtains government permission for a march, then at a celebration he congratulates himself on the fact that there are now 160 members of the select group.