Montenegro's First Domestic Film in Years to Premiere

An audience in Montenegro will a chance to see the country's first domestic film in years on Monday, when "The Boys from the Marx and Engelsa street" ("Dječaci iz ulice Marksa i Englesa") has its first public showing at the Herceg Novi film festival.

Filming has taken nearly four years because of numerous financial problems.

The film, a nostalgic story of two young men in Titograd, which is the former name of the capital, Podgorica, was shot at locations in Montenegro and in London over the course of two years and was completed in 2012.

But it took the authors and producers another two years to get hold of funds for the final edit and post-production process.
 
"We completed something that seemed impossible - to make a film in the Balkans, according to European standards, and on money that is below the European minimum," the director, Nikola Vukcevic, said ahead of the premiere in Herceg Novi.

Although the Montenegrin Ministry of Culture and the Montenegrin television supported the making of the movie, it was only completed thanks to donations from local companies.

The film follows the story of two brothers. On the same night, the older brother, Stanko, is going to kill a man for a first time, while his 16-year-old brother, Vojo, is going to make love for the first time. The paths of the two lads cross the same day several times in unusual ways.

The filming of the movie is divided into winter and summer stages, and that duality of time symbolizes two eras in the life of the Montenegrin capital - the Communist era, when it was called Titograd, and the present era, as Podgorica. The same city thus has two names and two identities. Director Vukcevic said the movie is both a story about the city...