01.06.2022.
Zastava Film’s documentary awarded at festival in Istanbul
The documentary "Soldiers’ Romances Forever", co-produced by the “Zastava Film” Military Film Centre and "Optimistic Film", has won the Best Feature-Length Documentary Award at the Best Istanbul Film Festival in Turkey.
The film producer and the director of the “Zastava Film” MFC, Colonel Goran Ikonić, said that he was proud of the film’s success.
- It is a story about love and family, which are the foundations and universal values of every society. For 74 years, this film production company has been making films that have won numerous international awards, particularly in its early period of film-making, so this award brings Zastava Film back to its path to success, which makes it particularly significant - said Colonel Ikonić.
The film director, Željko Mirković, PhD, said that this film is about soldiers’ love stories enacted by actors who appeared in the film “Soldiers’ Romances”, which was filmed 20 years ago.
- Twenty years ago, after obtaining my Bachelor of Arts degree in Film and TV Directing and completing my basic training, I continued my military service in "Zastava Film". We soon produced a personal documentary called "Soldiers’ Romances". It was a universal story about my friends with whom I served during the first part of my military service. These were young men with different destinies, from different parts of former Yugoslavia, immediately after the bombing in 1999. Each of those young men experienced love in a unique way at the time and dreamed about the future. More than twenty years later, I decided to look for the men with whom I broke bread in the military, actors of the “Soldiers’ Romances”. My idea was to make another film about them and their values today, after so many years - said Mirković.
This is not the first time that "Soldiers' Romances Forever" has won an award. Its first award was a Grand Prix at the 17th International Documentary Film Festival "Zlatna Buklija" (Golden Flask) in Velika Plana.
