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
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