After the difficult years of isolation Belgrade opened up, ready to take numerous tourists, businesspeople and curious parties who are flocking into our town from all corners of the globe. What happens when foreigners and locals meet? The Practical Guide to Belgrade with Singing and Crying is a contemporary romantic comedy on the temptations to find the one, told through four completely different love stories. In the beginning Stefan, the cocky young driver who trusts no one falls in love with Sylvie, a French chanteuse who had held herself in check for too long and is now on the verge of a nervous breakdown and about to do all of what she had always dreamed of for the first time. Melita, a frustrated middle aged woman, working by day as a concert promoter and becoming a disillusioned fetish dominatrix by night because her lover Brian, an American diplomat, is not who he says he is. After Melita leaves the hotel, Jagoda the cleaning lady, too beautiful for a heavy drinker, decides to test the fidelity of Orhan, German businessman of Turkish origin who, instead of buying a failed Serbian company, discovers roots of Turkish culture in Belgrade and falls in love with Jagoda. On her wedding day, Jagoda’s friend Đurđa, a Serbian policewoman, will confess to her Croatian policeman groom Mate everything she had always been keeping from him. United in diversity is the motto of the EU. Although there are all sorts of conditions we still have to meet in order to enter the EU, by making love to our dear guests from abroad, we are at least one step closer to Europe.
Producers:
Art & Popcorn, Belgrade
TR9 Film, Leipzig
PETIT Film, Paris
Laokoon FilmGroup, Budapest
Kinorama, Zagreb
Running Time: 90 min
Director: Bojan Vuletić
Script: Bojan Vuletić, Stefan Arsenijević
Producer:
Miroslav Mogorović
Oliver Ropke
Jean des Forets
Marie Dubas
Ankica Jurić Tilić
Gabor Sipos
Matthias Tuchmann
Director of Photography: Jelena Stanković
Editor: Ksenija Petričić
Production Designer: Jelena Sopić, Jovana Cvetković
Composer: Rastko Čolić, Gabriel des Forets
Costume Designer: Lana Pavlović
Key Make Up: Jana Schulze
Julie Gayet
Jean Marc-Barr
Baki Davrak
Leon Lučev
Bojan Navojec
Hristina Popović-Mijin
Anita Mančić
Marko Janketić
Nada Šargin
Miomira Dragićević
Marko Jremić
Ana Marković
Đorđe Marković
Sophie Merser
Milena Moravčević
Marina Opscenica
Pero Radičić
Danijela Štajnfeld
Andrijana Tasić
Miloš Timotijević
Nikola Vujović
- The 14th Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF)’s , The Special Jury Prize for the best director
- Wiesbaden FF, competition
- Karlovy Vary FF, east west competition
- Pula FF, competition (Croatia), critics award FEDORA
- Herceg Novi FF, competition (Montenegro) special judge award
- Leskovac FF, competition (Serbia)
- Cinema City FF competition (Serbia) award for Nada Sargin, best actress
- FIPRESCI best film critic award
- Sopot FF, competition (Serbia)
- Vrnjacka banja, competition (Serbia) best screenplay third award
- Bratislava FF, competition
- Cockatoo FF, competition (Australia)
- Warsaw Film Festival, Panorama
- Raindance, not competition (London)
- Leiden FF, Panorama (Nederland)
- Filmski susreti NIS (Serbia), award for Anita Mancic
- Festival of Serbian film in Australia