Danilo "Bata" Stojkovic Movies

Set during the Belgrade anti-war student demonstrations of 1992, and based upon a novel by Slobodoan Selenic, this Serbian drama uses the parallel romantic tales of two generations of Serbian to comment upon and compare the brutality inherit in Milosevic's regime to that of Tito's with the point that the former is equal to or even worse than the latter. Builka is photographing participants in the demonstrations for her hip young publisher when she discovers Bogdan, a Serbian soldier with a broken leg who has been unable to get much help at the hospital. This is because he was born in a Croatian village. But despite his birthplace, Bogdan hates the Croats because they commandeered his ancestral home. Builka, who simply hates war, kindly takes Bogdan home and ministers him. She listens to his naïve, hateful rhetoric and counters it with a more logical pacifistic view. The two continue sparring and eventually they fall in love. Unfortunately, love is not stronger than Bogdan's sense of patriotism and he is again lured to the battle fields. While her relationship with Bogdan blossoms and fades, Builka runs across the WW II era diaries of her grandmother Jelena, a wealthy young woman whose country estate was seized by Tito's followers. Her step-father is then tossed in prison. To help get him out, Jelena cozies up to the brutal partisan leader Krsman, a man she simultaneously loathes and feels attracted to. When she also gets involved with her step-brother she invites tragedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This black comedy is the latest from Goran Markovic, a life-long resident of Belgrade whose last film Tito and Me (1992) was the last film ever made in Yugoslavia. This black comedy masks tragic undertones as it tells the tale of the head of a Belgrade mental asylum known only as the Doctor as he tries to return his loony patients to their families after his hospital runs out of supplies. He and his patients set off across the city and the Doctor is dismayed to learn that few of their families want them back. During the journey, an old man and woman fall in love and the other patients marry them in a gay, slightly crazed ceremony. Fortunately for the bride, the groom still has family and land. Unfortunately his two grown sons don't realize that their father is coming. When he and his bizarre entourage suddenly arrive, much fighting ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Both the premise and the storyline falter and ultimately fizzle in this rural drama by Zivko Nikolic. A distinctive fishing village on a picturesque lake is inhabited by hard-working women who support their male counterparts because the latter are too busy to work -- they have to hang out in the local pub, flirt with the waitresses there, and dream of going to America where they must assume they will be paid for their current behavior. At any rate, one young man realizes that the modern era is upon them, and he gets the idea that they should connect their beautiful lake to the ocean by drilling a tunnel through the intervening mountain range. The result would empty the lake and give them rich soil for producing abundant crops. When a blond American bombshell, a second-generation Yugoslavian, arrives from the U.S. to work in the pub, the young man enlists her aid in his dream project. But the men are too overwhelmed by testosterone to think clearly, and soon the village is rift by a blood feud, presaging the tragic decomposition that would tear apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For anyone unfamiliar with the history of and divisions in Yugoslav society, parts of this film may zoom right past, uncaptured. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this slightly abstruse film, especially for anyone not familiar with the revolutionary fervor among East European students in 1968, a revolutionary who idolizes Che Guevara and has his own small group of followers, comes up against a mass of students at a university demonstration. While an actor declaims lines spoken by Danton from a play on the French Revolution, the devoted Che disciple stands up and exhorts the students in his own rhetoric, leaving them confused. In the end, he falls to his death from a window, and another "revolutionary" dressed up as Karl Marx picks up the sheets of paper of Che's writings near the dead man and continues on his way. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Sometimes handling the dead can be almost as difficult as handling the living, according to the Topalovic family and its many members -- from great-grandparents on down. They are losing ground in the fight to keep their cemetery business from going under and have had to make a clandestine alliance with n'er-do-well entrepreneurs that will supply them with recycled coffins at a cheap price -- an alliance that has kept the family in heavy debt to the grave-digging crooks. Meanwhile, young Mirko Topalovic has fallen in love with the daughter of one of the increasingly wealthy partners in the used coffin business. She works for a movie theater as a pianist (it is the era when silents are on the way out) and the owner of the theater has not yet fired her and switched to talkies because he wants her for himself. He suggests that they make a movie together -- an erotic movie he thinks to himself -- but seduction is his only goal. When Mirko starts to help out in this movie project, he comes to realize what is actually going on and overpowered by rage, he kills the woman and the theater owner. Puffed up with his aggressive deed, he goes home to convince the Topalovic family that they have to take up arms against the usurious grave-diggers -- and a wild and bloody melée ensues that will determine the fate of the family. Jelisaveta Sablic won the "Best Actress" award at the 1982 Pula Film Festival for her role as the sought-after female lead in this film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Brushed with shadings of a larger social and political commentary, this occasionally hilarious and consistently funny comedy looks at a closet alcoholic, Dr. Ilich (Ljuba Tadic) who treats alcoholism in others with an iron hand and a zany therapeutical approach. Between the music of Wagner, a diet in which apples figure prominently, and exercises that look like Chicken Little in take-off mode, the doctor is convinced his patients will be cured. What really ails most of them is what caused their alcohol problem in the first place -- so when the eccentric doctor takes six of his patients to a nearby brewery to demonstrate the success of his treatment, chaos results. First the apples taken on the trip are spiked by one patient (two of them "clink" their apples in joy) and then the brewery management and its own alcohol-addicted crew add to the patients' antics. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In Yugoslavia, a tiny little car (a Fiat) enables its driver to slip through traffic and filch parking places with ease. In this comedy, the Fiat's driver is preoccupied by two things: girls, and an upcoming drag race. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this children's film, based on stories by Banko Copic, two schoolboys from a 1922 Bosnian village have a series of adventures which take them away from their homes for the first time. Along the way, they see policemen taking food and animals from farmers who have not paid their taxes, and they meet up with the Haiducks, a band of robbers who steal from the rich and give to the poor. The benevolent robbers are induced to leave their mountain hideaway to avenge the poor farmers. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The theme of this experimental non-narrative drama has to do with the ways in which one knows oneself through memorabilia and remembering. The main character is seen experiencing various events, then settling down sometime afterward to view them: on film, through still pictures, or collections of souvenir items. The man views his life from mid-life to old age. In one storyline, he is wounded by a shooting in the streets but lives to view the incident on film. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This is a fine Yugoslavian coming-of-age story, affectionate even when it is bleak. It details the travails of Milan, a 15 year old who has difficulty dealing with being in the work-force. His father has gotten him a job killing bugs at the bakery he works in. He is unsuccessful in this, and continues to be unable to keep work. His father, in his concern for him, pays some whores to deflower the lad. Alas, even this does not go well. Clearly, the boy doesn't perform well on demand. The one person who can properly initiate the lad into manhood turns out to be his aunt, whose patience and humor triumph. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

When an older man marries a younger woman, they find it difficult to find common ground because of their age difference. He is the veteran of a war she is too young to remember. The couple tries to share their thoughts with each other and strengthen their marriage with a weekend getaway to a resort hotel. A strange hotel employee tells the wife he know the husband from the war but he is too young to have even been in the war. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide