Since Vučić came to power, films with themes from Serbian history that support the propaganda of the current government have been favored. That's why there are more of them than before him
Recently, the director Predrag Gaga Antonijević stated that with the coming to power of President Vučić, the attitude towards films with a national theme has changed significantly. "Until then, we weren't allowed to raise our voices. Nothing that had national recognition or themes could be accepted and valorized - Antonijević said, as reported by "Informer" and similar media.
Unlike Vučić's time, Antonijević emphasized, during Slobodan Milošević's time and after his fall, "only the scattering of ashes was stimulated".
Ordinary journalistic memory says that Antonijevic is wrong.
Photo: PromoFrom the movie "Montevideo, god saw you!!
If by "national theme" we mean films dealing with Serbian history, national identity, wars, Kosovo and Metohija, the suffering of Serbs or important events from the national past, then many titles come to mind from films made in this century.
The following is a list, which is of course incomplete, and which only features feature films without series.
In this century and before Vučić
In the film by Darko Bajić Live war from the year 2000 is the NATO bombing; Nataša Ljubiša Samardžić from the following year is about events in the 2000s; Gray truck with red paint Srđan Koljević from 2004 is about the last days of peace in Yugoslavia; Tour Goran Marković from 2008 takes place during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina; it is from next year Saint George kills the dragonSrđan Dragojević about Serbia and the First World War.
Kgak9kpTURBXy9kOGFmNzk3YTUzNDY5YWYzMjIyMGQ4Yzg3MjliOWMxOS5qcGeRkwLNA6wA3gABoTAF Besafrom the film "Besa" by Srđan Karanović
Besa Srđan Karanović from 2010 is about Serbs and Albanians on the eve of the First World War; films by Dragan Bjelogrlić from 2010 and 2012 Monte video, God bless you! i Montevideo, we see! are about the successes of our football team at the World Cup, and were shown in 2013CirclesSrdana Golubović, a film about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the nineties.
Next, in 2014, Ivan Ikić died To the barbarians dealt with young people after the newly declared independence of Kosovo, a Srdjan Koljević is in the movie I defended Mlada Bosnia showed how the film talks about a sensitive topic.
From Vučić to now
In 2014, Aleksandar Vučić became prime minister. It is very possible that Predrag Gaga Antonijević measures the time of Serbian cinema from that moment.
The list that follows further down in the text shows that more films with national themes have been made since Vučić than in the years before that. And here Antonijevic is right. But that number is not the result of the sudden need of filmmakers to talk about national history.
In 2017, the Film Center of Serbia for the first time announced a special competition for "co-financing the production of domestic feature films with a national theme". Thus, the national theme ceases to be only a content determinant of the film and becomes a special budgetary category of the state cultural policy.
Does it benefit the cinematography? It is unlikely, it is even considered to harm it, primarily because films on national themes have been misused, they have become a propaganda tool for increasing nationalism, the attitude that everyone hates Serbia and everyone is its enemy, and similar, close to the radical SNS.
On the list of films from Vučić to here, they are easy to spot. There are none in the previous one.
Second list
Here is the second list:
Enclave Goran Radovanović about the life of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija was shown in 2015; movie For the king and the fatherland Radoš Bajić from the same year is about the Ravnogorsk movement, Draža Mihailović and the occupation in 1941.
Predrag Gaga Antonijević recorded in 2018 Sleeping pill for soldiers about the Serbian army in the First World War; in the same year, Petar Ristovski recorded it film King Peter I; from the next one is a Serbian-Russian co-production Balkan border Andrej Volgin on taking over Slatina airport in Kosovo and Metohija.
Photo: Promofrom the movie "Dara from Jasenovac"
Predrag Gaga Antonijević recorded in 2020 Daru from Jasenovac; that same year, Darko Bajić's film was shown The name of the people about Svetozar Miletić and the annexed Vojvodina to the Kingdom of Serbia; Gordan Matić's film Shots in Marseille about the trial of accomplices in the assassination of King Alexander was shown in 2021; Heroes are Goran Nikolić's 2022 film about medieval Serbia after the Colors of Kosovo.
Photo: PromoFrom the movie "The Heroes of Halliard"
storm Miloš Radunović on the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the territory of Serbian Krajina was 2023, as was the Prime Minister Hero Haliard Radoš Bajić. The film is also from that year Why are my thoughts struggling? Milorad Milinković about Prince Mihail; Russian consul from 2024 by Miroslav Lekić is about Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija in the seventies; movie from the same year Picture Nikola Vukčević, a minority co-production with Montenegro, takes place during the Second World War.
Photo: PromoNikola Rakočević in "General"
This year, two films about Serbian history were shown: General Miloslav Samardžić on Draža Mihajlović, i Harvest Paul Kampf, about the organ trade in Kosovo and the Yellow House in the 1990s.
From "Gift" to "Meeting"
Predrag Gaga Antonijević recently finished shooting the film Meeting, the premiere is announced for Sretenje next year.
The Film Center of Serbia (FCS) announced this film as an ambitious project that brings to the big screen an epic about the birth of the modern Serbian state and the heroic days of the First and Second Serbian Uprisings.
Between Meetings i Dare from Jasenovac, Gaga Antonijević announced two film projects but did not realize them. Both were about themes from national history: an epic spectacle Janissary i Battle in Kosovo. He started and did not realize two series: the continuation of the story of Dara from Jasenovac, and Zadar's Crystal Night.
Spot the difference.
Those familiar with the history of film say that the only difference between the past and present attitude of the state towards national themes on film is the following: before Vučić, films respected historical facts and did not present them from the point of view of the current government. Like now. At that time, films that spread an unrealistic image of Serbia were not favored. In a word, films before Vučić were not propaganda tools. That's the difference.
What is happening in the country and the world, what is in the newspapers and how to pass the time?
Every Wednesday at noon In between arrives by email. It's a pretty solid newsletter, so sign up!
In Belgrade, someone wrote graffiti on the window of the Salon of the City Museum, where the exhibition of the October Salon is held. The perpetrator should have been captured by security cameras
80 films are coming to the 32nd Original Film Festival, many of them with awards from the Cannes festival. It is organized by a citizens' association, without a dinar of state money
Tomorrow "Zvezdara Theater" will celebrate the 400th performance of "The Book of Milutin" by Nenad Jezdić's monodrama. Plays that have been in the repertoire for more than a decade are currently being played in Belgrade. The musical "Some like it hot", even - three
More than 400 artists and cultural workers signed the request of the Initiative for Free Culture, which calls for the dismissal of all the leaders of cultural institutions in Pancevo.
At the moment when the institutions of the Republic are destroyed, when Vučić's octopus is still alive, when people are disgusted by the injustice and the stench left behind by the Essenes regime, we have, as Machiavelli said, only civic virtue as the fuel with which we can return to the beginning
The four independent members of REM are an example of perseverance and civic responsibility. Rodoljub Šabić even, upon leaving the premises of REM, after the sentencing of the Informer, experienced that the Essenes insulted him, hit him with their hands and feet. But that too will soon be over
Vučić pardoned the batterers and Dijana Hrkalović. The election winners should abolish the sultan's power that allows one man to run afoul of the entire judicial system
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
