Eastern Serbia is home to unique natural attractions and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Balkans. Lately, this region has been attracting more and more attention from film crews and can boast of an already enviable number of projects filmed there. In order to further accelerate this trend, the Serbian Film Association (SFA) and the Association for the Development of Sustainable Communities – TOC launched the Filmtastic East Serbia project, which aims to map and promote the region of Eastern Serbia as an attractive destination for filming.
Municipalities such as Negotin, Majdanpek and Zaječar carry a “film friendly” certificate, which means that they have suitable conditions for visits by film crews. Activities within this project will help to strengthen their status, to draw attention to new interesting locations, their cultural heritage and to help local people to engage in new projects that will be filmed there.
Some will be surprised by the fact that many filmmakers from all over the world have visited Eastern Serbia. It is also interesting to note that the film tradition in this region has existed since the beginning of the 1980s, when filming was intensive and when the greats of the local scene such as Bata Živojinović and Ljubiša Samardžić achieved some of their most notable roles here in films such as “Naive” and “Vampires Among Us”.
Places in Eastern Serbia which should have their own IMDB profile:
Stara planina has become popular in Bollywood in the last few years because for the purposes of URI: The Surgical Strike, the region of Babin Zub peak successfully played the role of Kashmir, and another Indian hit, Vivegam was filmed in the immediate vicinity. The Polish film Into the Wind and the Australian Oscar candidate You Won’t Be Alone were filmed on this mountain.
The list of projects filmed in the territories of the municipalities of Negotin, Majdanpek and the city of Zaječar has recently become more and more impressive, and the locations that stand out in this regard are the Danube bank, the Đerdap gorge, as well as the Rogljevačke and Rajačka pimnice near Negotin. Numerous important scenes from domestic films and series, mainly of recent date, were filmed there, such as Tears for Sale, Time of Death, Enclave, Shadows over Balkans, Hotel Belgrade and others. These well-known attractions sometimes play the roles of other locations, depending on where the plot of a particular movie is set.
Bor was also the location of several domestic titles such as The Tunnel, The Will of the Sons, Tilva Rosh, The Saga of Three Innocent Men.
Donji Milanovac was often the host city for filmmakers in the old Yugoslavia, so among others, already mentioned classics such as “Naivko”, “Hello, Inspector”, and “Vampires are among us” were filmed here.
Although Eastern Serbia is dominated by mountains pierced like French cheese, the film camera is often inclined to those locations that could not really be classified as natural attractions. Sometimes these are also industrial complexes, private estates, houses, but also taverns like the iconic Brodarska Kasina in Kladovo (today the restaurant “Jezero”) where the famous Yugoslav film And God Made a Tavern Singer was filmed.
Why do film crews return to these locations?
Municipalities in Eastern Serbia that have “film friendly” status have so far shown their willingness to cooperate with film crews. This means that they are happy to meet their logistics needs, that there are procedures according to which shootings in these areas are organized and that, in general, there is a system that supports the film industry in place.
In addition to bringing direct income to the locals, film shootings bring a number of benefits such as promoting new tourist destinations and the region’s gastronomic offer and engaging the population in the production or in the roles of extras, which is always particularly interesting for the locals.
Currently, as part of the Filmtastic East Serbia project, work is being done on expanding the online photo database that covers a number of locations from the area of Eastern Serbia, which will help domestic and foreign productions in choosing locations for future filming. However, the residents of these municipalities will still be most interested in training courses for those who want to be involved in future filming as managers, that is, location scouts in their territories. You can read more about this opportunity on the website of SFA, the initiator of the Film in Serbia brand.
If you are interested in how your municipality can get its own “film friendly” status and actively participate in the development of the film industry in Serbia, send an official request for more information to info@filminserbia.com.
This project, together with 11 other projects in six municipalities and cities aimed at the development of creative industries and the promotion of cultural heritage and tourism in Eastern Serbia, is supported by funds from the European Union and the Government of Germany, through the “EU for Cultural Heritage and Tourism” project, which is implemented by Germany organization for international cooperation – GIZ.