Discoveries from Serbia World Cinema

Bonkers (pl.) – adjective. Refers to mentally unstable, impractical, irrational, enthralled and obsessive people. Everything they need to do is to learn.

During interrogation, the captured young man admits to setting all of the village's wheat supplies on fire. Fully aware that his punishment will be death, he proceeds to give reasons for his act, and those reasons will make everyone in the room question themselves.

Exhausted from low-paid jobs, and following the breakup with his long-term girlfriend; frustrated Nikola believes his only escape is leaving the country. The story is set in one single day, in which he goes to an old friend from whom he buys a fake European Union passport. Throughout the day Nikola encounters several unpleasant situations that give us the impression that he's about to explode at any moment.

After witnessing the murder of night club dancer Patra Kleo, Belgrade's private sleuth Johnny Paluba is on a quest to find the killer. Police inspector Todorov, newly decommissioned is also looking to solve the crime. In the process they may have discovered a lost Serbian film made during WW2.

Serbian legend Marko Kraljevic goes on a journey to stop evil Turkish pasha harrassing Serbian people, especially women. He fights his foes, such as Musa Kesedzija, in company of his talking horse Sarac, Ravijojla the Fairy and others.

Early in the morning on the 24th March 1914 two trains arrived at the Railway station in Belgrade carrying the first generation of recruits from the newly liberated regions, Old Serbia and Southern Serbia. After the official reception, the recruits headed via central city streets towards the barracks in the Upper Town of Kalemegdan Fortress.

The film consists of five stories that are interconnected with mysterious characters and events. The main character is trying to discover the meaning of each. He gets sucked in the events that will lead him to the strange places where he meets strange people, fairytale creatures and landscapes.

A five-year-old boy spends a day with his father, whom he only occasionally sees, in nature, with the game of calling Echo. After a great emotional charge that the play and the presence of his father create in him, he returns to his mother's house, where there is no place for such outbursts of 'irrational' attitude towards the world.

A short experimental film.

An ill teenager believes that he can live normally. He meets a girl. They are both fans of the music group "Mesecina".

The documentary film “BRAT” captures the deep connections Dejan Milojević built with the people around him — he called everyone “BRATE” Even in America, among NBA stars and coaches, he preserved that same spirit.

The theater troupe is preparing the premiere of the play "The Death of Danton". While they are putting on a play, someone wants to demolish their theater.

Near Čačak, in the village of Rošci on Kablar, there is a small population, mostly elderly, residing in the tavern called “Kod Odže”, where the spirit of the village is preserved. The tavern serves as a central gathering place and hub of activity, where its regular visitors exist and create art out of leisure. Time at “Kod Odže” has no definition or duration; it exists in the present moment and becomes unique in that way.

Based on archival images from Yugoslav cinema, the film begins with words spoken by Milena Dravić in Dušan Makavejev’s W.R. Mystery of the Organism. On the other side, marked by the patriarchy, the fragmented experience of the woman and her broken body will follow.

The documentary film "250 Steps" is dedicated to the generation of Yugoslav junior national team that won the title of World Champions in basketball led by legendary coach Svetislav Pesic in the Italian town of Bormio in 1987.

In a weathered house among dense rows of trees, an elderly couple spends their days in peace. The approaching storm signals the presence of a young man whose arrival they have been expecting.

Victor has unfinished business with his former psychoanalyst Carmo. After years of holding a grudge, he lures Carmo into his house in order to finally take vengeance.

A low-budget Serbian comedy.

In chronological order, the film follows the career of Momčilo Bajagić – Bajaga, one of the most prominent rock musicians from former Yugoslavia, together with his band ‘Instructors,’ who have been accompanying him for 25 years now.

Stories About Bora Đorđević and Riblja Čorba, commercially most successful Serbian rock band.

One big lie pulls ordinary rural family in a complicated and unnatural relationships that culminate with multiple murders, a tragedy that leaves immense consequences for the survivors.

It’s like almost all is lost. Yet still they are here – abandoned bungalows, an artificial lake, dirty plastic bottles, lost donkeys and stray dogs, draining pipes running over fields of salt, deserted factories, statues of revolutionaries, concrete playgrounds covered with weeds, rotten fruit, folded T-shirts, pop songs, decades of forgetting, a single room with a blue tent inside. And it felt like a kiss.

Communist ideals have long lost their value in Yiwu, a city with 600 Christmas factories, in which Christmas as we know it is produced for the entire world. With rising wages, the workers in Christmas factories can now afford newest iPhones, but they still live in crowded dormitories. All migrants in their own country, nostalgic for some place far away, some miss their families left in hometowns, other miss their friends and lovers from the factories when they go home for holidays. Young generation is already tired of long factory hours, chemical fumes and glitter particles, and they do not care for their parents' wishes to get educated. Stuck in between Chinese tradition and the newly discovered Chinese dream, they want their own businesses, to be rich, to be independent, to be in love.

Nevena arrives to her family home in the countryside, where she is welcomed by her mother and grandmother. The time spent there brings unexpected changes—Nevena faces her grandmother's aging, the relationship between mother and daughter is put to the test, and through the lens of her camera, Nevena tries to preserve tender moments and the last remaining memories.

Two young people learn about the closely guarded secret of the existence of life after death and the hell in which parallel life flows. On Friday the 13th the only day of the year when the portal between the two worlds is opened they enter to save their grandmother and defeat evil. And in hell, the son of the devil Gojko gambles until his father calls him panicked because their existence is called into question.

A film about (local) patriotism, tourism and emigration. A girl lives in a gray, isolated country, enclosed by a huge wall. She has never travelled anywhere, but all her life she has dreamt of leaving forever for a perfect world called “Abroad”.

“Polica” follows four-member family across one day. Father is trying to assemble the shelf for his son Lazar. However, the things don’t go as planned, which leads to tension and quarrel between family members.

A young man enters a subway station, which is filled with posters and advertisements of beautiful men and women. Descending the stairs, he is plunged into a world he cannot control and finds himself on a strange path that leads to a chase through empty carriages, full of whispers and shadows in half-lit stations.

After reclaiming her house from the state, the school teacher is being pressured by an investor and all of her surroundings to sell the old family house.

An absurd day in the life of a student in Belgrade, Serbia.

A documentary about Novi Sad’s rock band Boye, which in the early 80s gave life to female spirit in Yugoslavia’s r’n’r music, fully aware of the type of music they chose, managed to position themselves on, up to then exclusively “male” scene and forced themselves as the original occurrences.

A documentary dedicated to the rescue of Jewish children in Pirot during the Second World War. In 1943 and 1944, citizens of Pirot risked their lives and the lives of their families to rescue numerous Jewish children, and protect them.

It is the summer of 2015. Fereshteh, a young Afghan woman, arrives in Belgrade with her husband and three children, after a gruelling months-long journey. She learns that her younger brother has drowned and will soon be buried as an unidentified person, a John Doe. As Hungary closes its borders to stop the influx of migrants from the Middle East, and as Fereshteh's husband and his family pressure her to continue their journey, she is doing all she can to give her brother a dignified burial.

An emotional journey through the life and film works of Nikola Stojanović, a graduate architect who directed five feature films, significant amount of short films and also founded and edited the legendary film magazine Sineast. He collaborated with some of the most prominent actors of Tito's Yugoslavia (Petar Božović, Mira Furlan, Predrag Ejdus, Radmila Živković) and was the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award of the Martovski festival. His son Srđan Stojanović directed this documentary with tender loving care, saluting the man he so admired.

A four-part musical short film by the Serbian artist Konstrakta.

A group of relatively young (30-35 years), college-educated, smart, urban people, whose youth was destroyed in the events during the breakup of Yugoslavia, in a late search for their identity.

A half-hour fictional documentary film that, through the fates of different people, tries to illuminate the phenomenon of the YUGO car, a cute outsider of small capacities but big ambitions, in the period between 1980 and 2008, when it was manufactured. The film combines statements from authentic workers that were involved in the production of Yugo, archives, along with the reconstruction of different fragments from the Yugo's history which portray him both as a family and a thug's car, as a part of the great American Dream, or as a symbol of betrayed expectations. This film is a small 'commemorative' review of the history of an automobile that for a long time symbolized, in a jocular and veritable way, sometimes even by accident, the times in which he was manufactured.

A comedy about two petty criminals Mungos and Tetreb who decide to rob a cafe full of valuable things for New Year's Eve. Robbery goes wrong and they run into a series of problems that they are trying to get out of.

The Museum of the Revolution in Belgrade is actually a building that remained unfinished for 60 years and 'inhabited' only by the homeless and marginalized. The director observes the precarious (but proud) daily life of a girl and her mother around the symbolic ruins of a utopia.

A series of characters visit the police station, run by one Đuro Palica.

A documentary film about the life and career of Momcilo Vukotic, one of the most significant footballers of Partizan and Yugoslav football. The film follows his sports career through interviews with former teammates, rivals and family, as well as his interests outside football, including painting and theater. Momcilo Moca Vukotic, won three Yugoslav championship titles as a player in 1976,1978 and 1983. As a sports-director, he won two tittles in 1986 and 1987. With the team from Humska street, he played 791 games in total, from 1968 till 1985. As a coach, he won Yugoslavia cup and Supercup in 1989. The film won awards for the best feature-length documentary film at the 14th International Sports Film Festival in Zlatibor as well as at the 3rd Budva Sports and Arts Film Festival.

Brief history of Serbian history from the World War I

Cinematic observations and testimonies intertwine with interpretations of contemporary dancers, the author’s sculptural work, and the voices of actors who lend their voices to non-human protagonists: geological formations, infrastructural objects, and animals. The author of the film, whose family was deported from Yugoslavia to Germany during the Second World War, re-learns the Serbian language, and reflects on the notion of migration and progress.

Dunja and Jasna are traveling with their mother Jovana to visit their father who lives alone in the cottage. DUNJA and JASNA are convinced that he had abandoned their mother because of the affair with another woman. By exchanging impressions of his action, they remember the past and reveal the expectations of a meeting. DUNJA treats this affair as a product of the father's crisis and hopes the visit could reunite family, while JASNA has accepted the parent's divorce as a final. Under the pressure, the mother reveals there was no adultery. She simply never loved their father.

The return to nowhere.

It's Saturday night and Mrdja, Piki and Sale want to have a good time. Everything they need is a robbery, a party and a gun.

Story of an ordinary village in which ordinary villagers, humble and hardworking people, used to live happy and peaceful lives when one day villagers decided to go to the city and find a companion for their favorite pig.

After leaving the ship on which she works, Sanja finds herself stranded, with nowhere to go but home. The shipyard has filed for bankruptcy, leaving many workers out of work. A storm comes; one life is lost. Luka is waiting for the night in the woods. The night when everything could change.

After the 1848 revolution with the help of Serbs and other allies Austrians managed to defeat Hungarians and preserve the centralist system of the Austrian Monarchy. A number of prominent Serbs lived in Vienna for years after the revolution. But their merits are slowly forgotten. The story begins in Vienna 1851 on a ball given by general's wife Ada, ahead of Easter.

The film follows a man who, despite the unusual circumstances,, does his job with great care and love...

The first Serbian internet movie is a story of the first Serbian hero, Marko Kraljevic. It is actually a tale of the local criminal underground, in which the story of a medieval warrior takes place in our present-day.

Famous TV host Ivan Ivanovic interviews a bloodthirsty monster caught by a cunning older man.

Two friends who work in a detective agency rob their boss in order to be hired by him to find the thieves. Their plan goes wrong after the man with a white hat steals their money. The investigation leads them to a casino cabaret club run by notorious Cornelone.

A playful older woman likes to go rough with various men. Her son tries to spoil the fun.

Fanis and Maria are living in the nasty center of Athens. They operate on the world of background actors and escape rooms. They are trying to make a killing in any way. They both sell and are being sold. Toxicity, porn, drugs. A wild and passionate couple in a dead-end love story.

In a cannibal-ravaged city, a girl named Magdalena tries to survive on her own, while searching for a rescue from a devastated Earth. While seeking for food, Magdalena sees an airship that could be her rescue from this planet, but gets attacked by a group of cannibals. She is rescued by Vuk, who takes her to his bunker and gives her a false sense of security. Afterwards he tries to eat her himself, but a group of girls, led by Talia, rescues Magdalena from Vuk, with whom she goes searching for a new life on a new planet, called Hope.

‘Borders, Raindrops’ is a film about love, maturity, and hope, growing in a barren and abandoned landscape. The film is divided in two parts, with the protagonist, a young woman – Jagoda – connecting them as a ghostly presence, bringing hope and reconciliation within the two narratives. She is a student visiting family in the summer, living in the declining villages of former Yugoslavia, overlooking the Adriatic coast. In the first story she bonds with a cousin in his mid-thirties, who is building a house in the village, but has no one to marry and live with him. In the second, she helps a teenage cousin understand that his nation is no better than others, and that they all have to learn to live together on the recently established borders.

Pirika travels to Berlin to visit her daughter Dobrila and her grandchildren, whom she's never seen. Dobrila, a lesbian, avoids her mother, however, because she doesn't want to tell her the full truth about her children. Everything is resolved at a German film retrospective, where Pirika plays the role of her life. A docudrama about the autumn of life of one of the leading protagonists of Zilnik's film Early Works.

A young woman works at a textil factory, where she secretly hides her daughter. After defending a young co- worker from the supervisor, she puts herself in danger.

Our imperative is not an individual's victory - but a better community.. We do not want to overtake you - but to surpass ourselves.. Our results do not point out that we are better - but that you can do it as well.