Maverick Reporter's Tale Becomes Sarajevo Siege Film

The filming of 'Sympathy for the Devil', based on French reporter Paul Marchand's book describing his experiences in wartime Bosnia and Herzegovina, will start in February this year.

"Marchand was reporting from Sarajevo under the siege during 1992 to 1993 and he published a book of the same name as the movie that we will start filming," Amra Baksic Camo, the producer of the film at Bosnian film and TV company Pro.ba, told BIRN.

Reports from the early 1990s describe Marchand - who committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 47 - as a cigar-smoking maverick who preferred a straw hat to a protective safety helmet.

"Don't shoot, waste your bullets. I am immortal," said the warning message to gunmen that he put on his car, the New York Times wrote in 1992.

"Marchand was risking his life, driving his car, trying to avoid sniper fire in Sarajevo, while the well-known song 'Sympathy for the Devil' was playing," Baksic Camo said, explaining how Marchand's book and the film got their title.

The 1,425-day siege of Sarajevo from April 5, 1992, to February 29, 1996 was longest of a capital city in recent history.

The film is a Bosnian-French-Belgian co-production and will be shot in Sarajevo.

"We will be filming all over Sarajevo in different but authentic locations that we will provide, even though Sarajevo is different now than back in wartime years," Baksic Camo said.

Niels Schneider, who won a French Cesar award for most promising actor in 2016 for his role in 'Dark Inclusion', will play Marchand.

Sarajevo officials will support the shoot by providing free access, but the general outlook for the film industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not bright, Baksic Camo said.

"In 2017 in Bosnia we did not have any...