Serbia’s Montevideo Cast Reunites For Sequel & Accompanying TV Series
The team behind Serbia’s most successful movie Montevideo, Bog Te Video is banking on success to breed success as they get underway on the much-anticipated sequel and a TV series. First-time director Dragan Bjelogrlic has called the original cast of young actors and established faces of Serbian cinema to pick up where the hit film left off. W!LD RooSTeR was invited on set to speak with the actors and director about the film’s success and their plans for the follow-up.
Travelling by tram and bus to a dilapidated railway yard on the outskirts of Belgrade, I was ready for a lot of sitting around. Film sets are not exciting places, with a lot of waiting around in cold spaces as scenes are re-set, re-lit and re-dressed. Usually that is dead time. Not so on the set of Montevideo, where the on-screen atmosphere seeps through the celluloid to real life.
As most people know by know, this endearing tale depicts a young team of part-time football players who carried the hopes of the Yugloslavian nation to the first World Cup Final in Uruguay. Helmed by Dragan Bjelogrlic, and based on the memoires of sports journalist Vladimir Stanković, this hugely nostalgic human tale of love, heroism and dreams uses old-style cinematography and authentic 1930s costumes to create a romantic atmosphere of simpler times. Since release, the film has broken Serbian box office records, and has gone on to be well received with international audiences, too.The film has also been put forward as Serbia’s candidate for the 2012 American Academy Awards.
“Of course, I always believed the movie could be a big success, because I believed in myself and my creation,’ explained actor-turned-director Dragan Bjelogrlić. “What I didn’t know was how the communication would be with foreign audiences. The first test was in Moscow and it was great. It was totally the same as here in the region, and that was surprising to me. It seems the movie has some kind of universal language, which is for me the big surprise.
“That is something that is very interesting about my job. First the communication with your own people, and if you are lucky enough to show your movie in other parts of the world, you see that the reactions are the same or similar. That is the biggest enjoyment you can feel. I feel sorry that I could not be in London, where the film was well received at the premiere. I would have liked to see that. But today I heard that we will be at the Sao Paolo film festival. I know that they are very passionate in South America, especially about football, so that will be very interesting for me. I hope they will appreciate our story.”
Miloš Biković, who plays the hero from Cubera, Aleksandar ‘Tirke’ Tirnanić agreed: “I only heard about this story when I started preparations for the movie, but it is a story with international appeal and an international language. When I hear that it has had a great reaction in Britain or France, then it means that it is a human story with real appeal and I am very glad about that. It has a style like old photography, which appeals to audiences on a basic level.”
To Viktor Savić (Milutin ‘Milutinac’ Ivković), the film’s success lies in the human appeal of a timeless story. “In the beginning, everybody in Serbia knew about Tirka and Mosa and nobody knew the rest of the team,’ he said. “But thanks to this film, everybody knows the story and the characters. It is a poetic story and you can feel that power. You feel for these people and go along with them. That is one of the joys of the film. This is a true story and my favourite movies are about reality, like about English history. That’s the type of films I enjoy.”
The positive aspects of the story that remain long after watching Montevideo are important for Viktor. “For me it is great because this is an historical movie that talks about good points in Serbian history, not again bad,’ he said. “The whole world is talking only about bad Serbia, but this is more about our hearts, it is a story of our people. I am glad that international audiences like the film so much. It is good for them to see something good from Serbia again.”
Although this was his directorial debut, Dragan made his name as an actor in the 1990s with hard-hitting Serbian films Pretty Village, Pretty Flame and Rane/The Wounds. Both were products of their time and they did not hold punches in their unflinching portrayal of the period.
“When I remember the 90’s in general, it was a very tough period for us,’ Dragan said. “I am very proud that my friends, all of us, we did something very important at that time by making those movies. We did something that could be some kind of stamp, a literal reminder of how it was. That was a hard period and those movies were very tough but that is good.
“Generally, in that period, Serbian cinematography was very strong, much stronger than now. Especially taking into account the conditions we were under. That shows that if you are really an artist you can make something under any conditions. You can see examples of that in Bosnia, not just Serbia. Why I try to do something very different right now is because in that time it was our duty to do something like Pretty Village, but now it is our duty to show a different level of our lives. The arts can give hope and if I can give hope to some people in this period. I feel that is my duty as an artist, as a director.
“On the spirit and poetic level, also, this movie is very different. In fact, I cannot compare this movie with any in our history. It is quite old fashioned. That was my original idea, based on my trust that this movie could be some new experience for the audience. And I was right.”
“When I decided to direct this movie I had a lot of doubt. I didn’t doubt my work with the actors, with that I was quite sure, but on another level: telling a story, poetic shots. I had some suspicions. But I now feel very comfortable. I didn’t feel anxious. It is not just me: the history of cinematography shows that actors can make good directors. My producer who had a lot of trust in my work and gave me a lot of freedom, which was very good.”
With such freedom comes great responsibility, and Dragan was unwilling to cut corners on the atmosphere he was trying to create by being cheap with period costumes and cars. “It was my idea to make it authentic and the problem was that this is very different to movies done here,’ he explained. “We don’t do a lot of period movies and, if we do, we have to hide a lot of things because of lack of money. I didn’t want to do that.”
Nikola Djuricko (Zivković) agreed. “It was a big production for us, with all the cars, costumes and CGI,’ he said. “It is not common in our cinematography to do that. When I saw that I was sure it was going to be a good movie that the audience would love but I never thought it was going to be such a success,’ he said. “It is nice to hear that it is so appreciated internationally, too. It is a local story but it has something that is not strictly local. It is a human tale with a nice atmosphere, some romantic things, and I think that appeals to everyone: for kids, for adults or for boyfriends and girlfriends. Period dramas are always good because you remember a time more romantically than it really was. It is a feel-good movie, which is not too common in Serbia.”
Building on the film’s international success, the Montevideo phenomenon moves on with a second feature, currently filming in Belgrade, Tenerife and Montevideo, to be in cinemas in April. “From the beginning, the idea was for one movie and one TV serial,’ said Dragan. “But when we started to develop, the script, I said to the producer, it is impossible to tell such a big subject in one movie. Then I had the idea that we do two stories. For the first time in our experience, we would immediately have the second one ready to go if the first had success – and it was one of the most huge successes in our history. So The Government gave us support for the movie and national television supported the TV serial.”
“The second part picks up when the first part finished, as the team leave Belgrade for Uraguay,’ said Dragan. “We start from the beginning of the trip, when they went on the train for seven days to Marseille and then on a 23 day journey to Montevideo. Then the main part of the story starts, when they arrive in Montevideo and the matches in the world cup.”
To allow fans to go deeper into the story and characters, a nine-episode TV series is being made to accompany each film. The first of these will air in Serbia and much of the Balkans in January and will run until the second film hits cinemas. The story will be completed with a second TV series scheduled to run off the back of the movie in May.
“We always had two scripts: one for the movie, one for the TV. We did four and a half hours as a TV serial for the first part, most of which you didn’t see in the movie, and we will do the same for the second part. Of course some scenes are duplicated in the movie but much shorter. For example, the travel by boat and train will be quite short but it will be much longer in the TV serial. The producer has a contract with a national TV station in Serbia and all main TV stations in the region have interest to show it after big success of the first part.”
ViktorSavić added: “You could not tell the whole story in one film. Everybody wanted the second part right after the first so we filmed almost back to back. When we were shooting in Tenerife – it was like when you are in school and you have summer holidays. But now we are in Belgrade. We should finish in January but I am not so sure. This is our third year of shooting – that is a long time to be on one project.”
While Montevideo has been a runaway success, film makers in Serbia still face tough times. “I don’t know if cinema was ever easy here, maybe during the Tito period, but people have a lot of ideas here and they have energy,’ said Dragan. “Money is always a problem and the system of financing could be better established to accommodate new circumstances. We have to fight to keep the audience, not to lose them. That is most important for small countries like Serbia because. Without an audience the question is why small countries are making movies. Is it for festivals only? No, I don’t believe in that. We used to have a huge audience for domestic movies and we have to fight to get them back. Last year we had success so we have to see now if maybe our success will open up new roads for directors to try something similar, to work in this genre, which could be very healthy for our people.”
Nikola has his own views about cinema in the region and what is needed to put it back on track. “We do not have a film industry now because we do not have such a big audience to sell our movies,’ he said. “Maybe if we start to do more regional movies – remember, we have the same language in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia – we could do something better. The ex-YU was that way so let’s go back to working together. It would be good for economy, for art, everything, and we would have more audience. But it’s easier said than done, of course. It is getting better but slowly.
“There are a lot of wounds and many right wing nationalists and fascists. That is the main problem. When you are talking to kids, one side of their story is always that they are a victim. We all have that story: the Croatians, the Bosnians, the Serbians, we are all saying the world was not good to us. When we acknowledge that we are singing the same tune, we can start again. We are not victims and we don’t have to feel like that.
“There was a victor, there was a war, and we have to be honest, to find out who did what. Only if we know the whole truth can we find some conciliation in it for ourselves and move on. We have to move on. There are many things that we did not say to each other, did not even say to ourselves, so it is going to be hard and take a long time. Maybe these actors will enjoy the fruits of that. I am not so positive about seeing it for myself.”
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