Montenegrin Cinema Cancels Screening of Serbian Chetnik Movie

A still from the movie 'Surrounded' about the Chetnik movement. Photo: www.filmnikolakalabic.com.

"The Serbian movie will not be shown in our cinema," Cineplexx told news website CDM.

Directed by Serbian author and publisher Miloslav Samardzic, 'Surrounded' is the first movie drama about the Chetnik movement in Serbia, according to the film's website.

It focuses on Kalabic and his associates' armed clash with German troops in Serbia in 1942. It is produced by Samardzic's publishing house Pogledi, known around the ex-Yugoslav region for publications about the Chetnik movement.

The Chetniks represented Serbian royalist interests during World War II but lost out to the Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party, who accused them of collaborating with Nazi occupation forces.

Kalabic was the commander of a Chetnik unit called the Mountain Guard Corps. After his death in1946, he was declared a "national enemy" by a Yugoslav court. The circumstances of his death have never been established.

In May 2017, a Serbian court in the city of Valjevo rehabilitated Kalabic, but in May 2018, Belgrade Appeals Court asked for the case to be reviewed to determine whether or not Kalabic participated in war crimes.

According to Serbia's Law on Rehabilitation, someone who committed or participated in war crimes does not have the right to rehabilitation.

Samardzic said in June last year that the movie should present the Chetniks as an anti-fascist movement. He said it was being funded by people in the Serb diaspora around the world.

"We are trying to rely as much as possible on our people who have emigrated who are in the film industry. We have a lot of descendants of Chetniks who are in the film...