The esteemed and celebrated Serbian film director and screenwriter Goran Paskaljević passed away at the age of 74. Paskaljević graduated in film directing from the Prague Academy. He directed many documentaries and TV dramas for TV Belgrade. He made his first feature film Beach Guard in Winter, in 1976. He has made more than 30 documentaries and 18 feature films, including: The Dog Who Loved Trains, Earthly Days Go By, Special Treatment, Twilight, The Elusive Summer of ’68, Guardian Angel, Time of Miracles, Tango Argentino, Someone Else’s America, Cabaret Balkan, How Harry Became a Tree, Midwinter Night’s Dream, Optimists, Honeymoon, When Day Breaks, Land of the Gods and Despite the Fog

Cabaret Balkan

Paskaljević’s films have been screened and awarded at the most prestigious international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, San Sebastian, Valladolid…). At last year’s FEST in Belgrade, Paskaljević presented his final film, an Italian-Serbian-Macedonian-French co-production Despite the Fog, shot in Italy. After this film, Paskaljević was slated to direct the film Cat’s Scream, which, like Despite the Fog, received the support of Film Center Serbia.

Special Treatment

Paskaljević won many prestigious awards, including the Critics’ Award for Best European Film in 1998 for Cabaret Balkan and the Critics Award at San Sebastian in 1990 for Time of Miracles. His films have been successfully screened at festivals in Berlin, Cannes, Chicago, Geneva, Haifa, Ghent, Munich, Nashville, Palm Springs, Pula, San Sebastian, San Francisco, Thessaloniki, Valladolid, Venice… Variety magazine ranked him in 2001 in the top five directors of the year, along with Las Hallstrom, Neil Jordan, Steven Soderbergh and Edward Young.

Elusive Summer of 68

Paskaljević is the first film director to receive the Bernard Vicky Memorial Fund Award (“The Bridge”) for humanism in his works in Munich in 2002. In November 2007, he was awarded the French Order of Art and Literature, which was presented to him on May 9th, 2008 in Belgrade.