Balkan Cinema: the directors, the stars and the films to see

By the ULTIMATE Editorial Team

From the first reels to the great studios

The cinema reached the region almost as soon as it was invented. In June 1896 a representative of the Lumière company showed films in a café on Terazije in Belgrade, and in 1905 the brothers Milton and Yanaki Manaki began filming everyday life in the southern Balkans with a camera bought in London; the cinematographers’ festival in Bitola still carries their name.

After the Second World War each republic of Yugoslavia built its own studio: Avala Film in Belgrade, Jadran Film in Zagreb, Bosna Film in Sarajevo, Triglav Film in Ljubljana and Vardar Film in Skopje.

National film archives followed, led by the Yugoslav Film Archive in Belgrade, founded in 1949 and now one of the largest in Europe, with a museum you can visit. From 1954 the whole country gathered each summer at the Pula Film Festival, held in the Roman amphitheatre, where the Golden Arena became the prize every actor wanted.

The Yugoslav Film Archive: our Belgrade page →   The Manaki Brothers Film Festival, Bitola →

The partisan epics: The Battle of Neretva and its fallen bridge

In the 1960s and 1970s the state studios made a series of grand Second World War films with generous public funding and casts of thousands, a genre now simply called the partisan film. The most famous is Veljko Bulajić’s The Battle of Neretva (1969), shot in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Yul Brynner, Orson Welles, Sergei Bondarchuk, Franco Nero and Hardy Krüger among its stars. It was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film.

Two stories still follow it. Pablo Picasso drew one of its posters, and Bulajić later recalled that the painter asked for wine rather than a fee. And for the climax the crew blew up the railway bridge over the Neretva at Jablanica; its twisted girders still lie in the green river, beside the museum of the 1943 battle, and they are one of the most photographed sights on the road from Sarajevo to Mostar.

Hajrudin Krvavac’s Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972) made a different kind of history: shown in China in the 1970s, when foreign films were rare there, it became one of the best-loved foreign films in the country, and its star, Bata Živojinović, a household name a continent away. Richard Burton, meanwhile, starred in Sutjeska (1973), filmed in the mountains of the national park of the same name.

Jablanica and the Neretva valley: our Sarajevo day trip →

The Zagreb School and the first foreign Oscar for animation

At Zagreb Film, a studio founded in the 1950s, a group of artists invented a new, spare style of cartoon: flat colours, bold lines, wit instead of sentiment. The world called it the Zagreb School of Animated Film.

In 1962 Dušan Vukotić’s Ersatz (Surogat), the story of a man who inflates everything at the beach, including his companion, won the Academy Award for best animated short: the first time the Oscar went to an animated film made outside the United States. Zagreb Film has put the whole film online, so you can watch it here.

Animafest Zagreb, founded in 1972, is one of the oldest animation festivals in the world and still brings the art to the city every June.

The Zagreb School of Animated Film →   Animafest Zagreb →

The Black Wave: the defiant films

In the 1960s a generation of film-makers began to turn the camera on the gaps between the official picture and everyday life: poverty, sex, bureaucracy, the hangover of revolution. Critics at home named their work the Black Wave, and it is now one of the most admired movements in European cinema.

Aleksandar Petrović’s Three (1965) and I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967) were both nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film, and the second, set among the Roma feather traders of Vojvodina, won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Belgrade-born Dušan Makavejev made Man Is Not a Bird (1965) and Love Affair (1967), then Innocence Unprotected (1968), which won a Silver Bear in Berlin, and WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971), a riotous collage that competed at Cannes and was kept off Yugoslav screens for years. Želimir Žilnik won the Golden Bear in Berlin with his first feature, Early Works (1969).

The price could be high. Lazar Stojanović’s graduation film, Plastic Jesus (1971), was banned before it reached a cinema, and its director served a prison sentence; the film’s own opening titles now tell its story: filmed in 1971, arrested in 1972, convicted in 1973 and set free in 1990.

Several Black Wave directors worked abroad for years, and their films returned to Yugoslav screens only later, which is why you will often see them today in restored versions at festivals and cinematheques.

The comedies everyone can quote

Ask anyone in Belgrade, Zagreb or Sarajevo for a favourite line from a film and the answer will very likely come from Slobodan Šijan’s Who’s Singin’ Over There? (1980), written by the playwright Dušan Kovačević.

A rickety bus crosses the Serbian plain on the eve of the Second World War with a cargo of quarrelling passengers and two gypsy musicians who sing the story as it goes; it was filmed largely on the Deliblato Sands, the great sandy steppe east of Belgrade. Šijan and Kovačević followed it with The Marathon Family (1982), about a dynasty of undertakers, and both films are still shown on television every year.

The same blend of farce and melancholy runs through the whole of Balkan comedy, from Kusturica’s Black Cat, White Cat (1998) to the dark comedies of today (see our watchlist below).

The Prague School

In the late 1960s and 1970s a remarkable group of young Yugoslavs studied directing at FAMU, the film school in Prague: Goran Paskaljević, Goran Marković, Srđan Karanović, Rajko Grlić, Lordan Zafranović and, a little later, Emir Kusturica. Back home they made some of the most successful films of the 1980s, warm, ironic and often bittersweet, and they are known together as the Prague School.

Paskaljević’s Special Treatment (1980) brought Milena Dravić the award for best supporting actress at Cannes, shared with Italy’s Carla Gravina. Grlić is still at work: his The Constitution (2016), a tender comedy about four neighbours in a Zagreb apartment block, won the Grand Prize of the Americas at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Emir Kusturica: two Palmes d’Or and a wooden village

Born in Sarajevo in 1954, Emir Kusturica won the Golden Lion for best first film in Venice with Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981). Four years later When Father Was Away on Business, a family story set in Sarajevo in the 1950s and seen through the eyes of a small boy, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar nomination. Time of the Gypsies brought him the award for best director at Cannes in 1989.

Then he went to America. Arizona Dream (1993) stars Johnny Depp as a young New Yorker who drifts into the desert with Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway; it won a Silver Bear in Berlin and the start of a long friendship.

Underground (1995), a wild, fifty-year fable of a cellar full of people who never learn the war has ended, gave him a second Palme d’Or, making him one of the very few directors to win it twice; Miki Manojlović, Lazar Ristovski and Mirjana Joković lead the cast. Black Cat, White Cat (1998) took the Silver Lion for best director in Venice.

For Life Is a Miracle (2004), filmed around the Šargan Eight mountain railway at Mokra Gora in western Serbia, he built a whole wooden village on Mećavnik hill. Drvengrad, as it is called, is now a place to stay and eat, and since 2008 it has hosted his Küstendorf Film and Music Festival every January.

Johnny Depp came in 2010, when a life-size statue of the actor was unveiled there. Monica Bellucci starred opposite Kusturica himself in On the Milky Road (2016), which competed in Venice; and with his No Smoking Orchestra he tours the world as a musician.

Drvengrad (Mećavnik): our Belgrade day trip →   Mokra Gora & the Šargan Eight →   The great rail journeys of the region →

Hollywood in the Balkans

Norman Jewison filmed Fiddler on the Roof (1971) in Croatia: its village of Anatevka was built in the countryside at Lekenik and Mala Gorica, south of Zagreb, and the film’s closing credits thank their residents. The Croatian producer Branko Lustig helped bring productions like it to the country; born in Osijek in 1932 and a survivor of Auschwitz, he went on to win two Oscars for best picture, for Schindler’s List and Gladiator.

Since then Dubrovnik has played a casino city in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the Adriatic coast has become one of Europe’s favourite film sets. One famous Balkan setting was never filmed in the region at all: the Montenegro of Casino Royale (2006), with its grand hotel and casino, was shot at Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic.

The stars: faces the whole region knows

Milena Dravić (1940–2018) was the great actress of Yugoslav cinema: free-spirited in Makavejev’s Man Is Not a Bird and WR, heartbreaking in Special Treatment, which won her the Cannes award, and loved for decades on stage and television. Her marriage to the actor Dragan Nikolić made them the region’s favourite screen couple.

Bekim Fehmiu (1936–2010), born in Sarajevo to an Albanian family, became an international star as the feather trader in I Even Met Happy Gypsies; he played Odysseus in the Italian television Odyssey (1968) and led the Hollywood film The Adventurers (1970). Olivera Katarina, his co-star in Happy Gypsies, was as famous as a singer as she was as an actress.

Velimir Bata Živojinović (1933–2016) was one of the most prolific actors of his generation, the hero of countless partisan films and, thanks to Walter, a star in China.

Miki Manojlović, the father in When Father Was Away on Business and Marko in Underground, has worked across Europe ever since. Among today’s actors, Jasna Đuričić won best actress at Locarno for White White World (2010) and the European Film Award for best actress for Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020).

The new generation: from Before the Rain to Honeyland

The films made since the 1990s carry the old energy into new countries. Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain (1994), shot around Ohrid and in London, won the Golden Lion in Venice and the first Oscar nomination for a film from North Macedonia.

Danis Tanović’s No Man’s Land (2001), two soldiers trapped in a trench between the lines, won best screenplay at Cannes and the Oscar for best foreign language film. Jasmila Žbanić won the Golden Bear with Grbavica (2006) and was nominated for the Oscar with Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020), the story of a translator for the United Nations in the July days of 1995 at Srebrenica.

Honeyland (2019), by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, follows a wild-bee keeper in an abandoned Macedonian village; it won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance and became the first film ever nominated for the Oscars for both best documentary and best international feature.

In Serbia the actor Dragan Bjelogrlić, remembered from Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996), turned director with Montevideo, God Bless You! (2010), the story of the national team at the first football World Cup, and Croatia’s Goran Bogdan has crossed over to American television in Fargo.

Watch the old films and the new side by side and you can see the line: the Black Wave’s nerve, the Prague School’s warmth and Kusturica’s brass bands all live on in today’s Balkan cinema.

Twelve films to see, and the performances to watch for

Valley of Peace (France Štiglic, 1956): John Kitzmiller as the American airman sheltering two children, the first Black actor to win best actor at Cannes.

Three (Aleksandar Petrović, 1965) and I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967): Bekim Fehmiu’s feather trader at the heart of the second.

Man Is Not a Bird (Dušan Makavejev, 1965): Milena Dravić at her most luminous.

Early Works (Želimir Žilnik, 1969): the Golden Bear winner that defined the Black Wave.

The Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969): the grandest of the epics, for its scale and its bridge.

Who’s Singin’ Over There? (Slobodan Šijan, 1980): an ensemble in which every passenger is a character actor’s masterclass.

Special Treatment (Goran Paskaljević, 1980): Milena Dravić’s Cannes-winning role.

When Father Was Away on Business (Emir Kusturica, 1985): Miki Manojlović and Mirjana Karanović as the parents, Moreno D’E Bartolli as the boy.

Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995): Lazar Ristovski and Miki Manojlović in full flight.

Before the Rain (Milcho Manchevski, 1994): three stories that circle back on one another.

No Man’s Land (Danis Tanović, 2001): Branko Đurić and Rene Bitorajac, two men and a single trench.

Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Žbanić, 2020): Jasna Đuričić’s European Film Award-winning performance.

The modern dark-comedy watchlist

The Balkans laugh at the darkest things, and nowhere more brilliantly than on screen. Start with No Man’s Land, as funny as it is devastating. Then Gjergj Xhuvani’s Slogans (2001), about a teacher in a 1970s Albanian village who must spell out a slogan in stones on the hillside: the first Albanian film selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

Vinko Brešan’s The Priest’s Children (2013) sends a young priest on a Dalmatian island on a very unorthodox campaign to raise the birth rate. Miroslav Momčilović’s Death of a Man in the Balkans (2012) is told entirely through a webcam left running in a Belgrade flat after its owner dies, as the neighbours, the police and the undertakers come and go.

Rajko Grlić’s The Constitution (2016) brings together four neighbours who have every reason to dislike one another. And for an evening of pure farce, there is always Kusturica’s Black Cat, White Cat.

The festivals and where to watch

The Sarajevo Film Festival, founded in 1995, is the biggest film event in the region every August, with open-air screens all over the old town. Belgrade’s FEST has opened the film year every winter since 1971;

Ljubljana has LIFFe in November, Zagreb has Animafest and the Zagreb Film Festival, Skopje has Cinedays and Bitola the Manaki Brothers festival, and Tirana has its International Film Festival in the autumn. Küstendorf fills Drvengrad every January.

Out of season, the national cinematheques are the best way into Balkan film: the Kinoteka in Belgrade, the Kinoteka in Zagreb, the Slovenian Cinematheque in Ljubljana, the Kinoteka of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, the Cinematheque of North Macedonia in Skopje and the Montenegrin Cinematheque in Podgorica, each with its own programme of classics.

Sarajevo Film Festival →   LIFFe, Ljubljana →   Zagreb Film Festival →   Tirana International Film Festival →   Slovenian Cinematheque →   Cinematheque of North Macedonia →

Country by country: the national long reads

Each country’s cinema has its own story, and we are telling them one by one on our city guides.

Croatia: From Jadran Film and H-8 to the Cannes winners The High Sun and Murina, the stars from Boris Dvornik to Zrinka Cvitešić, the Pula and Zagreb festivals and the Croatian names of Hollywood.

Albania: From Kinostudio, Skanderbeg and the first feature, Tana, to Slogans, the stars from Sandër Prosi to Nik Xhelilaj, the Tirana International Film Festival and the Belushis.

Serbia: From Avala Film and the Black Wave to Underground, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame and Circles, the stars from Bata Živojinović to Sonja Savić, and the actors who crossed over.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: From Bosna Film and Kusturica’s Sarajevo to No Man’s Land, Grbavica and Quo Vadis, Aida?, the stars from Mustafa Nadarević to Emir Hadžihafizbegović, and the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Montenegro: From Lovćen Film and Živko Nikolić’s The Beauty of Vice to the Sundance winner To Hold a Mountain, the stars from Veljko Mandić to Momčilo Otašević, and the Herceg Novi Film Festival.

North Macedonia: From the Manaki brothers’ first films in Bitola and Vardar Film to Before the Rain, Honeyland and DJ Ahmet, the stars from Petre Prličko to Labina Mitevska, and the Manaki Brothers festival.

Slovenia: From Triglav Film and France Štiglic’s Valley of Peace to Class Enemy and Consequences, the stars from Štefka Drolc to Maruša Majer, and the Festival of Slovenian Film in Portorož.

Croatian Cinema and its global stars →   Albanian Cinema and its global stars →   Serbian Cinema and its global stars →   Bosnian Cinema and its global stars →   Montenegrin Cinema and its global stars →   Macedonian Cinema and its global stars →   Slovenian Cinema and its global stars →

City by city: the film pages on our guides

Each of our Balkan city guides has its own film page, with the stars, the locations and the cinemas of that city and country.

Belgrade on film: Avala, the Kinoteka, Kusturica and the stars →   Zagreb on film: the Zagreb School, Fiddler on the Roof and Branko Lustig →   Ljubljana on film: Valley of Peace and the Slovenian Cinematheque →   Sarajevo on film: Kusturica, Žbanić, Tanović and the festival →   Montenegro on film: Bulajić, the cinematheque and the Bond that never was →   Skopje on film: the Manaki brothers, Before the Rain and Honeyland →   Tirana on film: Kinostudio, Slogans and Bekim Fehmiu →

Questions and answers