Canneseries entry “Operation Sabre” goes back in time to Serbia’s very own Kennedy moment: the day when its first democratically elected Pm, Zoran Đinđić, was murdered.
“Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the assassination. This moment didn’t just change our politics. It changed our lives,” says producer Snezana van Houwelingen.
“He was in power for more than two years and during that time, many people actually moved back from abroad. It was our last moment of hope. Now, we are just going in circles and there is no progress. We have to do something for the next generation, the one that doesn’t even remember him anymore.”
Đinđić, who served as Pm from 2001, was killed in 2003 – one year after the beginning of the trial against former president Slobodan Milošević.
“He played such an important role in this country’s crucial moments.
“Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the assassination. This moment didn’t just change our politics. It changed our lives,” says producer Snezana van Houwelingen.
“He was in power for more than two years and during that time, many people actually moved back from abroad. It was our last moment of hope. Now, we are just going in circles and there is no progress. We have to do something for the next generation, the one that doesn’t even remember him anymore.”
Đinđić, who served as Pm from 2001, was killed in 2003 – one year after the beginning of the trial against former president Slobodan Milošević.
“He played such an important role in this country’s crucial moments.
- 4/8/2024
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: The creative team behind Canneseries competition show Operation Sabre wanted to tell a “bigger truth” through their drama about the assassination of Serbia’s first pro-democracy prime minister, an event that remains raw in the public psyche.
No undertaking to tell the story of the killing of Zoran Đinđić in 2003 had been taken via TV drama, they told Deadline in the week leading up to the Cannes confab, and so they wanted to use scripted narrative devices to go beyond just this single event for the show being distributed by German major Beta Films.
“Our main narrative device was creating these fictional characters and through them we told a story that is a bigger truth – not just the factual truth – of who we are as a society, why this was happening and the choices the characters were making,” said co-creator Goran Stankovic. “Having these characters helped us tell a...
No undertaking to tell the story of the killing of Zoran Đinđić in 2003 had been taken via TV drama, they told Deadline in the week leading up to the Cannes confab, and so they wanted to use scripted narrative devices to go beyond just this single event for the show being distributed by German major Beta Films.
“Our main narrative device was creating these fictional characters and through them we told a story that is a bigger truth – not just the factual truth – of who we are as a society, why this was happening and the choices the characters were making,” said co-creator Goran Stankovic. “Having these characters helped us tell a...
- 4/8/2024
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
Beta Film has acquired international distribution rights to Serbian crime thriller “Operation Sabre” (“Sablja”) about the assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić.
The eight-hour series – selected for Canneseries’ Long Form Competition – is created and directed by Goran Stanković and Vladimir Tagić. The duo already collaborated on “Morning Changes Everything” and wrote the new show alongside Dejan Prćić, Maja Pelević and Marjan Alčevs.
Heading back to March 12, 2003, Stanković and Tagić show the aftermath of the killing that threw the whole country into chaos – only one year after the beginning of the trial against former president Slobodan Milošević, indicted in 1999 for war crimes.
Đinđić, who served as Pm from 2001, following a stint as mayor of Belgrade, advocated pro-democratic reforms. He was also one of the co-leaders of the opposition to Milošević’s administration.
“Operation Sabre” is produced by Snezana van Houwelingen for This and That Productions, in co-production with Martichka Bozhilova...
The eight-hour series – selected for Canneseries’ Long Form Competition – is created and directed by Goran Stanković and Vladimir Tagić. The duo already collaborated on “Morning Changes Everything” and wrote the new show alongside Dejan Prćić, Maja Pelević and Marjan Alčevs.
Heading back to March 12, 2003, Stanković and Tagić show the aftermath of the killing that threw the whole country into chaos – only one year after the beginning of the trial against former president Slobodan Milošević, indicted in 1999 for war crimes.
Đinđić, who served as Pm from 2001, following a stint as mayor of Belgrade, advocated pro-democratic reforms. He was also one of the co-leaders of the opposition to Milošević’s administration.
“Operation Sabre” is produced by Snezana van Houwelingen for This and That Productions, in co-production with Martichka Bozhilova...
- 3/12/2024
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Elene Naveriani’s Georgian drama about a 40-something independent woman who has an affair that triggers an existential awakening, has won the top prize for best film at the 2023 Sarajevo International Film Festival.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry star Ekaterine Chavleishvili also took the best actress honor at the Heart of Sarajevo awards, which were handed out in the Bosnian capital Friday night.
The best actor prize went to newcomer Jovan Ginic for his role in Vladimir Perisic’s Lost Country as a Serbian teenager in the 1990s, caught between student protests against the authoritarian regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his loyalty to his mother, who happens to be the spokeswoman for the regime.
Ukrainian filmmaker Philip Sotnychenko won best director for La Palisiada, a slow-burning crime drama about two old friends, a police detective and a forensic psychiatrist, who investigate the murder of their colleague in...
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry star Ekaterine Chavleishvili also took the best actress honor at the Heart of Sarajevo awards, which were handed out in the Bosnian capital Friday night.
The best actor prize went to newcomer Jovan Ginic for his role in Vladimir Perisic’s Lost Country as a Serbian teenager in the 1990s, caught between student protests against the authoritarian regime of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his loyalty to his mother, who happens to be the spokeswoman for the regime.
Ukrainian filmmaker Philip Sotnychenko won best director for La Palisiada, a slow-burning crime drama about two old friends, a police detective and a forensic psychiatrist, who investigate the murder of their colleague in...
- 8/19/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cannes Critics’ Week, a parallel film festival sidebar selected by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, has unveiled its 2023 selection of 11 features, including seven competition titles and four special screenings.
The section focuses on first and second features from emerging directors. The 62nd edition runs alongside the main Cannes festival May 17-25.
This year’s competition lineup includes two Asian horror movies: the Korean horror film Sleep (Jam) from first-time director, and former Bong Joon Ho assistant, Jason Yu, and Tiger Stripes from Malaysian director Amanda Eu. The former features Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun and Train to Busan‘s Jung Yu-mi as newlyweds whose lives descend into horror triggered by the husband’s strange behavior while asleep. Tiger Stripes, which draws inspiration from Southeast Asian folklore, is a coming-of-age tale about a 12-year-old girl whose body starts to change in alarming and horrifying ways as she hits puberty.
Physical changes...
The section focuses on first and second features from emerging directors. The 62nd edition runs alongside the main Cannes festival May 17-25.
This year’s competition lineup includes two Asian horror movies: the Korean horror film Sleep (Jam) from first-time director, and former Bong Joon Ho assistant, Jason Yu, and Tiger Stripes from Malaysian director Amanda Eu. The former features Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun and Train to Busan‘s Jung Yu-mi as newlyweds whose lives descend into horror triggered by the husband’s strange behavior while asleep. Tiger Stripes, which draws inspiration from Southeast Asian folklore, is a coming-of-age tale about a 12-year-old girl whose body starts to change in alarming and horrifying ways as she hits puberty.
Physical changes...
- 4/17/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cannes Critics’ Week has announced the selection for its 62nd edition, running from May 17 to 25.
The parallel Cannes section will screen 11 features, seven in competition, and four as special screenings, selected from 1,000 submissions. Scroll down for the full list.
The section, which is overseen by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, focuses on first and second features as well as shorts by emerging talents.
Stories of couples, parenthood, family relationships and friendships unfolding against difficult political or societal realities abound in this year’s line-up.
In Competition, Brazilian director Lillah Halla’s Power Alley (Levante) follows a budding teenage volleyball champion who discovers she is pregnant on the eve of an important championship and then comes up against Brazil’s abortion ban.
Blocked in her attempts to seek an illegal termination, the girl’s future seems to be in everyone’s hands but hers, until help comes from an unexpected quarter.
The parallel Cannes section will screen 11 features, seven in competition, and four as special screenings, selected from 1,000 submissions. Scroll down for the full list.
The section, which is overseen by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, focuses on first and second features as well as shorts by emerging talents.
Stories of couples, parenthood, family relationships and friendships unfolding against difficult political or societal realities abound in this year’s line-up.
In Competition, Brazilian director Lillah Halla’s Power Alley (Levante) follows a budding teenage volleyball champion who discovers she is pregnant on the eve of an important championship and then comes up against Brazil’s abortion ban.
Blocked in her attempts to seek an illegal termination, the girl’s future seems to be in everyone’s hands but hers, until help comes from an unexpected quarter.
- 4/17/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Watching “Kiss the Future,” a documentary about the band U2’s relationship with wartorn Sarajevo in the 1990s, it’s hard not to think: “We’ve seen this movie before.” That’s not to do with the doc itself so much as how aspects of the 30-year-old footage from Bosnia’s brutal civil war parallel what we’ve seen in the news coverage coming out of Ukraine for the past year. Both involve stranger-than-fiction (or stranger-than-fascism) scenarios of cosmopolitan cities suddenly subject to state terrorism, which makes the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck-produced film coincidentally timely, for all its belatedness.
In a sense, “Kiss the Future” is the story of a long-distance romance, between a superstar rock quartet reaching its peak and a once-grand metropolis that’s bottoming out. In the early ’90s, genocidally minded Serbian president Slobodan Milošević tried to subject the happily mixed population of Sarajevo to...
In a sense, “Kiss the Future” is the story of a long-distance romance, between a superstar rock quartet reaching its peak and a once-grand metropolis that’s bottoming out. In the early ’90s, genocidally minded Serbian president Slobodan Milošević tried to subject the happily mixed population of Sarajevo to...
- 2/23/2023
- by Chris Willman
- Variety Film + TV
The Irish director and musician John Carney once made a movie under the working title “Can a Song Save Your Life?,” though the name was changed before it was released. And another batch of Dublin musicians of note ask a similar question in the documentary “Kiss the Future,” which premiered on Sunday at the Berlin International Film Festival and finds U2 using music to aid the occupants of a city under siege, Sarajevo.
Directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Sarah Anthony and written by Bill S. Carter, who is also a major player in the events depicted, “Kiss the Future” is a portrait of a city and a people who used culture to fight back; it’s also the story of a rock ‘n’ roll band exploring the limits of how its music can impact the real world. Above all else, though, it’s a...
Directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Sarah Anthony and written by Bill S. Carter, who is also a major player in the events depicted, “Kiss the Future” is a portrait of a city and a people who used culture to fight back; it’s also the story of a rock ‘n’ roll band exploring the limits of how its music can impact the real world. Above all else, though, it’s a...
- 2/20/2023
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
For almost four years of siege in the 1990s, the city of Sarajevo concussed from shelling, the rumblings of armored vehicles and the repeated pop of sniper fire.
But in stolen moments, other more hopeful sounds broke through: music coming from underground clubs and through TV sets whenever electricity wasn’t interrupted. Songs like U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “One.” The human need for the joy and release of music underpins the documentary Kiss the Future, which recounts how Bono and band took up the cause of Sarajevo. The documentary produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Sarah Anthony, and Drew Vinton and directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain made its world premiere tonight at the Berlin Film Festival.
The film (a sales title at the Berlinale) takes us back to 1992 when Serbia, under the barbaric leadership of President Slobodan Milošević, embarked on a campaign of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing in...
But in stolen moments, other more hopeful sounds broke through: music coming from underground clubs and through TV sets whenever electricity wasn’t interrupted. Songs like U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “One.” The human need for the joy and release of music underpins the documentary Kiss the Future, which recounts how Bono and band took up the cause of Sarajevo. The documentary produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Sarah Anthony, and Drew Vinton and directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain made its world premiere tonight at the Berlin Film Festival.
The film (a sales title at the Berlinale) takes us back to 1992 when Serbia, under the barbaric leadership of President Slobodan Milošević, embarked on a campaign of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing in...
- 2/19/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Some films are so disgusting, repellent, violent, prurient, or tasteless that audiences find themselves unable to easily define them.
Films like Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom," Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist," Gaspar Noë's "Irreversible," Ruggerio Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust," Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer," Tom Six's "The Human Centipede" trilogy, or even John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" are all brazenly confrontational films, each seemingly intended not to draw the audience in, but send the audience out. To keep viewers repelled and disgusted. One might argue that such "extreme" cinema seeks not merely to elicit a visceral response from an audience -- as, say, a mid-2000s torture porn film may do -- but to move them to a level of disgust so intense that they cannot help but push their mind into the realm of politics and philosophy.
To state a broad point: "Extreme" horror,...
Films like Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom," Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist," Gaspar Noë's "Irreversible," Ruggerio Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust," Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer," Tom Six's "The Human Centipede" trilogy, or even John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" are all brazenly confrontational films, each seemingly intended not to draw the audience in, but send the audience out. To keep viewers repelled and disgusted. One might argue that such "extreme" cinema seeks not merely to elicit a visceral response from an audience -- as, say, a mid-2000s torture porn film may do -- but to move them to a level of disgust so intense that they cannot help but push their mind into the realm of politics and philosophy.
To state a broad point: "Extreme" horror,...
- 8/20/2022
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Belgrade-based Firefly Productions has closed a raft of deals in the run-up to this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival, where the Serbian production powerhouse leads the pack with 19 nominations at the Heart of Sarajevo TV Awards, including best drama series nods for supernatural drama “Block 27” and psychological thriller “Black Wedding.”
As Variety previously reported, Beta Film has acquired international distribution rights to “Block 27” (pictured), a science fiction-mystery series about the disappearance of a teenager in Belgrade. Firefly has also closed deals with Australian public broadcaster Sbs on “Black Wedding,” which follows a government agent investigating a killing spree and its links to ancient folklore, and “The Family,” a five-part miniseries about the arrest of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević.
The company is also in advanced talks with buyers in North America and Europe on several other series.
The deals come as construction gathers steam on Firefly’s long-awaited studio complex,...
As Variety previously reported, Beta Film has acquired international distribution rights to “Block 27” (pictured), a science fiction-mystery series about the disappearance of a teenager in Belgrade. Firefly has also closed deals with Australian public broadcaster Sbs on “Black Wedding,” which follows a government agent investigating a killing spree and its links to ancient folklore, and “The Family,” a five-part miniseries about the arrest of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević.
The company is also in advanced talks with buyers in North America and Europe on several other series.
The deals come as construction gathers steam on Firefly’s long-awaited studio complex,...
- 8/13/2022
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Oscar-winning director Danis Tanovic (“No Man’s Land”) has boarded the high-end comedy-drama series “Frust,” which is currently being developed by Serbia’s Firefly Prods. and Hungary’s Joyrider.
The six-episode series follows a young writer struggling for recognition. The writer suddenly becomes a local celebrity after accidentally shooting a petty criminal who’s been terrorizing his neighborhood. Production of the series is slated for 2022.
“Frust” is among a slate of projects being presented at the European Film Market by Firefly, the Belgrade-based production outfit co-founded by Ivana Mikovic and Boban Jevtic.
Also in development is “Absolute 100,” a six-episode series based on the hit film by Srdan Golubović, which tells the story of a talented amateur shooter who reluctantly kills a local criminal when her family is threatened. Golubović, whose drama “Father” unspooled in the Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar last year, will lead the directors team.
Inspired by real-life events, “Black...
The six-episode series follows a young writer struggling for recognition. The writer suddenly becomes a local celebrity after accidentally shooting a petty criminal who’s been terrorizing his neighborhood. Production of the series is slated for 2022.
“Frust” is among a slate of projects being presented at the European Film Market by Firefly, the Belgrade-based production outfit co-founded by Ivana Mikovic and Boban Jevtic.
Also in development is “Absolute 100,” a six-episode series based on the hit film by Srdan Golubović, which tells the story of a talented amateur shooter who reluctantly kills a local criminal when her family is threatened. Golubović, whose drama “Father” unspooled in the Berlinale’s Panorama sidebar last year, will lead the directors team.
Inspired by real-life events, “Black...
- 3/3/2021
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Austrian playwright and author Peter Handke, perhaps best-known in film circles for his screenplay of Wim Wenders’ classic Wings Of Desire, has won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. Playwright, novelist, screenwriter and director Handke also wrote Wenders’ movie The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick and directed movies including The Left-Handed Woman and The Absence, both of which starred Bruno Ganz. The decision to award Handke won’t be without controversy given his support for the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war, and for speaking at the 2006 funeral of Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of genocide and other war crimes. Meanwhile, Polish novelist and activist Olga Tokarczuk belatedly won the 2018 award, which was delayed by a year after a crisis in the academy sparked by allegations against Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of Nobel Academy member Katarina Frostenson. Agnieszka Holland adapted one of Tokarczuk’s most celebrated novels into the 2017 movie Spoor.
- 10/10/2019
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Austrian writer Peter Handke, who helped pen the screenplay for Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” and Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, one of whose novels was adapted into the Berlinale film “Spoor,” have been named winners of the Nobel Prize for literature.
Handke was awarded the prize for 2019, and Tokarczuk was retroactively named as the winner for 2018. The Nobel for literature was not given out last year because of a sexual assault scandal that engulfed the prize committee.
The announcement of the award winners Thursday came after the body that gives out the literature prize, the Swedish Academy, pledged to be more proactive in considering writers from other parts of the world amid longtime accusations of European and Anglophone bias. Both Tokarczuk and Handke, however, are Europeans.
Tokarczuk, 57, was considered a strong contender for the prize. Her novel “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” was widely acclaimed, recently...
Handke was awarded the prize for 2019, and Tokarczuk was retroactively named as the winner for 2018. The Nobel for literature was not given out last year because of a sexual assault scandal that engulfed the prize committee.
The announcement of the award winners Thursday came after the body that gives out the literature prize, the Swedish Academy, pledged to be more proactive in considering writers from other parts of the world amid longtime accusations of European and Anglophone bias. Both Tokarczuk and Handke, however, are Europeans.
Tokarczuk, 57, was considered a strong contender for the prize. Her novel “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” was widely acclaimed, recently...
- 10/10/2019
- by Henry Chu
- Variety Film + TV
MONTREAL -- "The Cordon", a film from Serbia/Montenegro by director Goran Markovic, picked up the Grand Prix of Americas at the 27th Montreal World Film Festival's closing ceremonies Sunday. The top prize-winning film is set in 1997 in Serbia and revolves around a citizen uprising against dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic contains the protesters with police cordons and a brutal police force. Now a teacher at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, Markovic directed such films as "Tito and Me" (1992), "Burlesque Tragedy" (1995) and "Serbia Year Zero" (2001). The runner-up prize in Montreal's main competition section, the Special Grand Prix of the Jury, was awarded to Canadian director Louis Belanger's "Gaz Bar Blues", which opened the festival. The $100,000 movie, the second feature by Belanger, is about a man who runs a gas station-cum-neighborhood cafe with the help of his three sons and a loyal friend. Belanger's first feature, "Post Mortem", won the best director prize in 1999 at Montreal.
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