Nikola Simic Movies

Dusan Milic's hostage film Jagoda in the Supermarket stars Branka Katic in the title role. She is a 30-year-old cashier who, after seeing someone else steal the man she wanted to date, makes the mistake of refusing to sell an elderly woman some strawberries. The next day the woman's grandson, Marko (Srdjan Todorovic), walks into the store firing weapons and taking hostages. Eventually the relationship between Jagoda and Marko deepens and grows more complex. Jagoda in the Supermarket was screened at the Berlin Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Supposedly focusing on the life of Sigmund Freud by means of a fictional secret diary, this attempt at satirizing the man from his childhood through his first forays into psychoanalysis is weak on laughter, especially since it is difficult to tell whether a scene is serious or not. Freud (Bud Cort) is portrayed as being too nauseated by blood and physical anatomy to make it through medical school, and because he misunderstands what practicing medicine is all about, he accidentally starts psychoanalyzing his patients. His Ultimate Patient (Dick Shawn) provides him with the theories that would make him famous. Presented as a series of nearly disconnected vignettes, this story about the relationships between Freud and a nurse (Carol Kane), and his mother (Caroll Baker) and a doctor, are meant to be funny, but are not quite. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In another Yugoslavian feature film that seems to have been created as a pilot for a TV series rather than as a self-contained feature-length movie, a series of characters gather around specific incidents and then disperse. The story begins with a student who arrives in town and happens upon a card game in which one of the participants is a traveling salesman beset with the classic struggles of home, debt, family, and more debt. He leads the way to his home and its environment, complete with fatuous teenagers and a bumbling wife. Into this less-than-perfect world enters the student, looking to work for them. And so the situation comedy continues, revolving from one situation to the next. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, 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

Even into the 1960s, Yugoslavian films played up the contributions of their partisan underground during World War II. Square of Violence is a loose, unacknowledged reworking of the 1943 film Hostages. When partisans kill 30 Nazi officers in a bombing, the Germans respond by taking 300 Yugoslav hostages. Broderick Crawford, the man responsible for the bombing, must weigh the importance of keeping the identities of his comrades secret against the lives of the 300 captives. This is the directorial debut of Leonardo Bercovici. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set during World War II and the German invasion of Yugoslavia, this fast-paced, evocative drama tells the story of a group of men trapped between slow starvation and sudden death. As the German army advances, a group of partisan fighters are guarding the rear of a line of Yugoslav guerilla troops. When they reach the Sutjeska Gorges they are cut off from their support base, with their backs against a wall. Their supplies are almost gone and they can either remain where they are and eventually die of hunger or, outnumbered and outgunned, they can launch their own attack against the massive German army. Among them is a young pregnant woman, lending an even more tragic note to their plight. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide