http://youtu.be/GziTmQJ0CtM
Serbia isn’t exactly the most LGBT-friendly country in Europe—attempts to throw Pride parades have been met with suppression and violence—but a new gay-themed movie there isn’t just rockin’ the box office, it’s challenging long-held cultural and anti-gay prejudices.
Winner of the audience-favorite award at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival, Serbian filmmaker Srdjan Dragojevic’s The Parade is a black comedy about a gay couple from Belgrade who hire a war vet to protect their upcoming Pride march. He, in turn, hires a rag-tag bunch of fighters from Bosnia, Albania and Croatia to provide some extra muscle.
Call it The Fabulous Seven—or maybe The LGB-Team. (Okay, we’ll stop.)
Released in October, The Parade is the biggest blockbuster in the region in ages—drawing more than a half-million viewers—and is equally popular across the former Yugoslavia’s various republics. (No mean feat given the brutal wars and ethnic cleansing there in the 1990s.)
“The whole region is united for the first time in liking this film,” Dragojevic tells the AP. Given the suffering and devastation the Balkans have seen, he says “it is very important for people to recognize… that it is irrelevant what nationality you are, how you pray or who you go to bed with.”
Quentin
Bosnia already made an inter-ethnic gay romance film “Go West” almost a decade ago.
Adam
That trailer was super trippy.
Andy
It’s a gay Seven Samurai! Seems like a great movie.
jason
Serbia is only just coming out of the Dark Ages as far as gay rights is concerned. Keep in mind that the Serbs are a very passionate and friendly people – so long as you are on their side.
Never underestimate this part of the world. A Serbian teenager called Gavrilo Princshot and killed the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire as well as his wife Sofie after their touring motorcade took a wrong turn and ended up in front of a delicatessen where Princip was lingering following a failed grenade attack earlier in the day. This happened on June 28, 1914. Outrage spread through the Empire and Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia exactly one month later. The rest, as they say, is history. World War I began.
Every other event of the 20 th century stemmed from this. The fall of the European Houses of Royalty, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Communism throughout the world, World War II, America’s ascendancy to superpower status, the Vietnam War, the formation of Israel. Princip fired the shots heard around the world which changed the world forevcer and ever.
My point is that what happens in the Balkans IS important to us.
jason
Correction to my previous post, the Serb teenager who fired the shots heard around the world was Gavrilo Princip, not Gavrilo Princshot (!). I edited it badly. The third line of my post above should read “A Serbian teenager called Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the heir to the…”.
David Gervais
Dusan–
And you are trolling here because…?