Srđan Dragojević and Goran Marković are suing the Ministry of Culture for the decision that the court process they are leading should be stopped because there is no money in this year's budget for the 2021 competition! Dragojević announces the court in Strasbourg
Movie house Srđan Dragojević Delirium doo, a film production and distribution company, sued the Ministry of Culture for the decision to suspend the proceedings (more on that later) because, to put it simply, there is no money in this year's budget for the 2021 competition, which is the subject of the dispute.
"In October, it will be five years since the dispute against the Ministry of Culture and the Film Center of Serbia has been going on," director Srđan Dragojević told Vreme. "I will go to Strasbourg if I have to. 'Scarts' is my life's project, part of a trilogy in which 'Beautiful Villages are Beautiful' and 'Wounds', and that film could have already been finished if it had been done legally."
The story of that trial is laughable, but not funny.
In August 2021, the Film Center of Serbia announced, for the first time, Competition for financing/co-financing of films by eminent domestic directors. It is listed as a completely new competition category in the FCS calendar.
An eminent director is one who has directed at least five feature films, at least one of which has participated in the Cannes, Berlin, Venice or Toronto festivals.
Only Želimir Žilnik, Goran Marković, Srđan Dragojević, Puriša Đorđević and Emir Kusturica met these conditions that year. The first three competed.
The competition committee was appointed by the FCS: screenwriter Biljana Maksić was the president of the committee, and the members were Miloš Pavlović, dean of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, Siniša Bokan, dean of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Jugoslav Pantelić, director of the Yugoslav Cinematheque, and Milan Knežević, director and president of the Association of Film Artists of Serbia.
The competition committee submitted three proposals to the FCS Board of Directors, namely for the film "Skartovi" by director and screenwriter Srđan Dragojević, produced by Biljana Prvanović - Delirijum doo (30 million dinars), for the film "Doctor D" by director and screenwriter Goran Marković, produced by Tihomir Stanić (24 million dinars) and the film "Freedom and Barbarism" by director and screenwriter Želimir Žilnik, produced by Playground (16 million dinars). Total - 70 million.
However, the Board of Directors of FCS decided not to accept the Commission's proposal at the meeting on November 25, 2021. The decision was made by majority vote, without any explanation.
The president of the Board of Directors was Jelena Trivan, director of FCS, and the members were Vladan Živković, Aleksandar Conić, Miroslav Lekić, Petar Jakonić, Anđelija Andrić, Sandra Perović, Aleksandar Erdeljanović and Miroljub Stojanović. Anđelija Andrić and Miroljub Stojanović were against canceling the competition. It was the first time in FCS history that the Board of Directors rejected the expert opinion of the commission.
A few days later, and due to pressure from the public, especially the media, which demanded an explanation, the Board of Directors announced that after the end of the competition, it was noticed that "two out of the three selected films were repeatedly rejected by different competition committees of the Film Center", so the Board concluded that this special competition did not lead to the expected result - "to be a chance for a new author's work by eminent directors, instead of giving a privileged status to films that were rejected in the regular competition".
In those days, the Supervisory Board had some other proposals: to give all the planned money to one film, and to give priority to the oldest director. It was a shameful proposal, but the authorities did not react.
The official explanation of the Board of Directors was, to put it mildly, unconvincing, so the decision of the Board of Directors was perceived as censorship towards authors who are "politically unfit".
Namely, in Marković's film, part of the public recognized the "treasonous" story about the war criminal Radovan Karadžić, and the unprecedented targeting of one of our most important filmmakers, even by the highest state officials, began.
And Dragojević's film "Skartovi" was also seen as "unpatriotic", while Žilnik in the meantime managed to shoot another film, "Restitution, or, The Dream and Java of the Old Guard" by participating in other FCS competitions.
Immediately after the announcement, the Board of Directors announced that they will repeat the competition by the end of 2021, noting that three rejected eminent directors can also apply. However, that never happened.
The competition for eminent domestic directors from 2021 remained the only competition of its kind. In the following years, that competitive category does not appear on the FCS website, there is no information that it was abolished by a special act. She simply disappeared.
Goran Marković and Srđan Dragojević, through Srđan Dragojević's film company Delirium, sued FCS in the Administrative Court. The basis for starting the court process was substantial, starting with the decision of the Board of Directors not to accept the proposal of the Commission, and so on. Let's just say that the Management Board violated the principles of legal certainty and competence for making decisions on professional issues.
The court was silent., the Ministry of Culture also did not declare itself regarding the illegal procedure of the Board of Directors, the years were piling up, so Delirium sued the Ministry of Culture for, as it is legally said, the silence of the administration.
On March 25, 2025, the Administrative Court issued a ruling ordering the Ministry of Culture to plead, and the Ministry responded: on October 21, 2025, it issued a ruling annulling the 2021 decision of the FCS Board of Directors, and the case was remanded to the FCS for reconsideration.
In that coin, FCS had a new Board of Directors that he chaired Miroslav Lekić (was also in the previous Board). Their decision was that they could not decide on it because "they were not elected by those who made the original decision." That explanation has no basis in the Law on General Administrative Procedure, because the Management Board is obliged to act according to the decision of a higher body, regardless of its composition, which grossly violates: the right to a fair procedure and a reasonable duration of the procedure (RS Constitution), freedom of artistic creation (Article 73 of the RS Constitution), the right to an effective legal remedy.
Because of all this, the Board of Directors of FCS sent the case back to the Ministry of Culture to decide.
And, on August 13, 2026, the Ministry of Culture concluded that there are no funds in this year's budget for the Competition for Eminent Directors.
It is impossible to comment on this conclusion, and to the question of how it would be possible to find money in this year's budget for something that happened in 2021, Minister Niklola Selaković himself would hardly be able to answer.
The lawyers of Dragojević and Marković sued the Ministry of Culture for this. They listed many laws and their members that have been violated during these five years: the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the Law on Cinematography, the Law on Culture, the Law on the Budget for 2021, the Law on the Budget System, the Statute of the Film Center of Serbia, the Regulation on the rules for awarding state aid, the Regulation on the criteria, criteria and method of selecting cultural projects that are financed and co-financed from the budget of the Republic of Serbia and others.
In particular, it was pointed out "many years of illegal behavior by administrative authorities, which systematically and flagrantly violated not only procedural rules, but also the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the parties to legal protection, and especially to an effective legal remedy (right to a fair procedure)".
He also raised the question "if the Ministry considered that the procedure should be suspended because there is no item in the budget, the question arises as to why it did not immediately make such a decision, but the exhaustion of the parties in the procedure continues."
The ministry did not say where the money was. It did not provide evidence as to whether the funds were actually earmarked for the said Contest, whether they were returned to the Budget of the Republic of Serbia, and if they were returned, when the funds were returned and by whose order.
Particularly interesting are the remarks in the lawsuit against the Ministry, which indicate that the entire procedure, and especially their latest decision, is "against the general interest of cinematography in Serbia, and therefore the interest of the Republic of Serbia."
In the conclusion of the lawsuit, it is written that "in this legal matter, the key facts that were of crucial importance for this decision were not established. Obstructing the proceedings and violating the party's right to an effective legal remedy, the acting body never fundamentally declared itself about the illegal decision of the Board of Directors of the Film Center of Serbia to reject the proposal of the Competition Commission composed of eminent experts in the field of cinematography, except that it itself stated in the previous decision that there was no justification".
That is why they are asking the court to order the Ministry of Culture to decide on the appeals of Dragojević and Marković against the decision of the Board of Directors from October 2021.
"In this way, post festum, the injustice could be corrected and the damage that was caused in the previous procedure to the eminent Serbian directors Goran Marković and Srđan Dragojević, whose projects the Commission, in an aggregated and professional manner, in a procedure prescribed by law, chose and determined the exact amounts of funds that should be allocated from the budget," the lawsuit says.
"When interest for all these years is added to the 30 million dinars proposed by the Commission for my film, that amount could be twice as much," says Srđan Dragojević, and repeats that he will film "Skartove" "even if I had to get money from the accounts of progressives who are hidden in tax havens".
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