The feature-length hybrid documentary Warm Film premiered on March 10th 2024 as part of the official program of the Thessaloniki International Festival. The film was supported by Film Center of Serbia (FCS), and the project of it won first place at the fifth documentary film workshop organized by the DokSerbia Association. The world premiere at one of the most important documentary film festivals in the world was also attended by the author of the film, Dragan Jovićević, who, along with Nataša Pavlović and Predrag Azdejković, is also the film’s producer.
Although a documentary, Warm Film has fiction parts, in which two young actors, exploring the presence and meaning of queer characters in the history of Yugoslav and Serbian cinematography, at the same time prepare their film roles. The two actors are Đorđe Mišina and Đorđe Galić, and the team also includes cinematographers Nebojša Vasić and Aleksandar Jovanović, composer Nenad Jelić, sound designer Filip Verkić, while the editing is signed by the film’s producer Nataša Pavlović.
According to Jovićević, the film was extremely well received by the audience, who, despite the late hours and the Oscars being broadcast live in a nearby cinema, stayed with them for a long time talking after the screening. “Our biggest dilemma was to what extent the foreign audience will be interested in the history of our cinematography from such a specific angle and how they will understand all the complexity of this area – but it was dispelled at the first international screening. The audience in Thessaloniki accepted all the complexity of one country and one minority, which was our main goal during the long process of working on this film”.
The Serbian premiere of is expected soon in Belgrade.
Two other feature-length documentary film projects supported by the Film Center of Serbia were presented at the festival.
As part of the Agora Docs in Progress program, among the eleven selected projects, there was the project of director and producer Sonja Đekić “Dream Collector”, a Serbian-Croatian co-production (KEVA/Wolfgang & Dolly) about the prominent artist Vladan Radovanović.
Twelve documentary projects were presented at the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum, including the project “Kafka in Belgrade” by director Maša Nešković and producers Maja Medić and Ena Barjaktarević. The project recently received two awards – The Equity and Inclusion Award, awarded by the European Film Market – Equity Inclusion Program and another, awarded by TIDF AGORA – Thessaloniki Pitching Forum at the When East Meets West Coproduction forum in Trieste.