Before anyone had even seen Heroes of Halyard, it was already engulfed in scandal.
At an industry presentation at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink forum in August, Telekom Srbija, which produced Heroes of Halyard together with Contrast Studios, screened clips of the World War II epic. The film, from Serbian actor and director Radoš Bajić, was still in postproduction and the clips were only meant to give the audience a sense of the scope of the production, one of the biggest and most ambitious films ever made in the region.
Instead, they sparked a political backlash. Some accused the film, which tells the story of the historic rescue of American airmen by Serbian fighters in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia in 1944, of glorifying Serbian nationalist groups. Benjamina Karić, the mayor of Sarajevo, called the film “revisionist” and demanded festival organizers distance themselves from the producers and the screening, which they promptly did.
At an industry presentation at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink forum in August, Telekom Srbija, which produced Heroes of Halyard together with Contrast Studios, screened clips of the World War II epic. The film, from Serbian actor and director Radoš Bajić, was still in postproduction and the clips were only meant to give the audience a sense of the scope of the production, one of the biggest and most ambitious films ever made in the region.
Instead, they sparked a political backlash. Some accused the film, which tells the story of the historic rescue of American airmen by Serbian fighters in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia in 1944, of glorifying Serbian nationalist groups. Benjamina Karić, the mayor of Sarajevo, called the film “revisionist” and demanded festival organizers distance themselves from the producers and the screening, which they promptly did.
- 12/28/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: The Euro 2020 Final, which featured a dramatic England penalty defeat to Italy and chaos as thousands of un-ticketed fans attempted to storm Wembley Stadium, is to be charted in a Netflix feature documentary from My Daughter’s Killer producer Rogan Productions.
Airing later this year, Netflix’s as-yet-untitled doc will examine one of the biggest days in English football history through the eyes of those who were there via user-generated content, archive and interviews.
The game was England’s first major football final since winning the World Cup in 1966 and took place on home turf, with the majority of the delayed tournament played in the UK.
And while on the pitch a dramatic match ended in a heartbreaking penalty defeat to Italy, there was plenty of drama off it. Thousands of people without tickets tried to storm the national 90,000-seater stadium and more than 2,000 gained access to Wembley without tickets.
Airing later this year, Netflix’s as-yet-untitled doc will examine one of the biggest days in English football history through the eyes of those who were there via user-generated content, archive and interviews.
The game was England’s first major football final since winning the World Cup in 1966 and took place on home turf, with the majority of the delayed tournament played in the UK.
And while on the pitch a dramatic match ended in a heartbreaking penalty defeat to Italy, there was plenty of drama off it. Thousands of people without tickets tried to storm the national 90,000-seater stadium and more than 2,000 gained access to Wembley without tickets.
- 1/17/2023
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
The solar eclipses of 1961 and 1999, both observable in Serbia, bracket the events explored in the lyrical imagery of Nataša Urban’s debut feature-length documentary. But because life so rarely arranges itself neatly along a defined timeline, they do it imprecisely, blurring over a little at either edge, the way memories do. As a metaphor, too, these astronomical events are evocatively imperfect: Our tiny little moon can occasionally blot out the sun the way an individual’s act of willful forgetfulness can all but obscure massive geopolitical upheaval. But an eclipse passes according to immutable laws of physics; memory and reckoning do not obey a similarly strict orbit. People are far less predictable than planets.
Still, our interpretation of celestial mechanics can be politicized, as the Serbian-born Urban outlines in the contrasting depictions of the two eclipses. In 1961, lovely, scratchy archive footage shows excited Yugoslavs crowding the streets, at the express encouragement of the government,...
Still, our interpretation of celestial mechanics can be politicized, as the Serbian-born Urban outlines in the contrasting depictions of the two eclipses. In 1961, lovely, scratchy archive footage shows excited Yugoslavs crowding the streets, at the express encouragement of the government,...
- 4/12/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Mediawan Rights, the sales arm of European media group Mediawan, is ramping up its documentary slate with the addition of two new feature films, Variety has learned.
Directed by Ado Hasanovic, “My Father’s Diaries” is an intimate portrait of the Bosnian War that uses 8mm footage shot by the director’s family, as well as his father’s written account of the period from the start of the war through the infamous “death march” that saw some 15,000 Bosniaks attempt to trek more than 60 miles to escape Serbian forces.
Produced by Italian powerhouse Palomar (“The Name of the Rose”), pic is the story of a son who grew up in the shadow of war and seeks answers to his trauma through the films and writings his father left behind. Acting as co-producer, Mediawan Rights is looking for presales to round out the financing.
Arianna Castoldi, Mediawan Rights’ head of documentary sales,...
Directed by Ado Hasanovic, “My Father’s Diaries” is an intimate portrait of the Bosnian War that uses 8mm footage shot by the director’s family, as well as his father’s written account of the period from the start of the war through the infamous “death march” that saw some 15,000 Bosniaks attempt to trek more than 60 miles to escape Serbian forces.
Produced by Italian powerhouse Palomar (“The Name of the Rose”), pic is the story of a son who grew up in the shadow of war and seeks answers to his trauma through the films and writings his father left behind. Acting as co-producer, Mediawan Rights is looking for presales to round out the financing.
Arianna Castoldi, Mediawan Rights’ head of documentary sales,...
- 7/4/2021
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
The nightmarish cruelty of the Bosnian Serbs’ genocidal assault on the Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica in July, 1995 is vividly and nightmarishly rendered in the curiously titled Quo Vadis, Aida? Ferocious and lucid, director Jasmila Zbanic’s film relentlessly pushes to the heart of the matter while accompanying a local Un translator who does everything she can to help while also trying to arrange for the safety of her husband and two sons. It’s a despairing, nay, devastating piece of work that leaves one drained, exhausted, appalled and admiring, which is the desired and only plausible reaction to Bosnia’s International Feature Oscar hopeful. It debuted last fall at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. Zbannic’s previous feature, Grbavica: The Land Of My Dreams, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2006.
A quarter century on, most people who even recall the events at all would...
A quarter century on, most people who even recall the events at all would...
- 3/8/2021
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
Perhaps the most difficult task faced by any filmmaker attempting to commemorate an atrocity is to manage the vast disparities in scale. To communicate the extent of a war crime like the Srebrenica massacre, which saw 8,372 civilian residents of the Bosnian town, mostly men and boys, murdered by units of the Bosnian Serb Army in July of 1995, the canvas needs to be broad. But often, that scope can mean lower resolution when you zoom in, the individual human impact getting lost in the grain. But this is a perilous balance director Jasmila Žbanić achieves strikingly well in her deeply compelling, harrowing and heartbreaking “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” which reminds us that each of those 8,372 deaths is an individual, exponential multiplication of horror.
The most inspired creative decision in this sensitively fictionalized version of true events comes in the form of the film’s protagonist, Aida, a local Srebrenica resident who...
The most inspired creative decision in this sensitively fictionalized version of true events comes in the form of the film’s protagonist, Aida, a local Srebrenica resident who...
- 9/5/2020
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Shot without big stars or a convoluted plot, without heroes but with plenty of cowards, Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? plunges the viewer into the raw horror of ethnic cleansing during the war in Bosnia Herzegovina. Seen through the eyes of a Un interpreter, events unfold on July 11, 1995, in the small town of Srebrenica, which entered into history when units of the Bosnian Serb army commanded by Ratko Mladic murdered more than 7,000 civilians, primarily men and boys, and raped the town’s women.
Zbanic’s expert telling is simple and to the point, relying on the audience’s empathy with ...
Zbanic’s expert telling is simple and to the point, relying on the audience’s empathy with ...
Shot without big stars or a convoluted plot, without heroes but with plenty of cowards, Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? plunges the viewer into the raw horror of ethnic cleansing during the war in Bosnia Herzegovina. Seen through the eyes of a Un interpreter, events unfold on July 11, 1995, in the small town of Srebrenica, which entered into history when units of the Bosnian Serb army commanded by Ratko Mladic murdered more than 7,000 civilians, primarily men and boys, and raped the town’s women.
Zbanic’s expert telling is simple and to the point, relying on the audience’s empathy with ...
Zbanic’s expert telling is simple and to the point, relying on the audience’s empathy with ...
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