Yugo Cult

The first episode of the Yugo Kult series is dedicated to the film Sveto mesto (1990), one of the most significant horror films of Yugoslav cinematography. The dark, erotic and unique vision of Đorđe Kadijević is a free adaptation of Gogol's short story "Vij", in a combination of Slavic folklore and Gothic. The story of the fear and lust of an Orthodox theologian, forced to pray for three nights over the (un)dead girl Katarina, with motives of incest, feudal violence and devastating hatred, was never fully accepted by the general public. Our guest is the actress Branka Pujić, who portrayed Katarina Županski in the film, one of the most impressive female characters in domestic genre films.

The second episode of the Yugo Kult series is dedicated to the film Boy Who Promises, a controversial 1981 film by Miša Radivojević. Made only a year after Tito's death, the film captured urban intensity and generational disorientation, heralding the end of an era, but also of the Yugoslav project. Aleksandar Berček, in his most significant role, created a generational figure of the eighties - a degenerate prophet, a "boy of promise" and a rebel who rebelled against bourgeois hypocrisy with a "dream of music", only to fall even lower afterwards. Characterized by the audience and critics as pornography, nihilism and cheap provocation, The Boy Who Promises is today a key achievement of the Yugoslav "new wave". Forty-five years later, The Promising Boy seems more relevant than ever, and we talk about the film and its legacy with the legendary director Miloš Miša Radivojević.

This forgotten crazy classic was created in a Yugoslav-Czech co-production and follows the experiences of the science fiction writer Robert, whose imagination collides with reality in unexpected and bizarre ways. Visitors from the Galaxy represent a rare beast of Yugoslav cinema, combining special effects by the famous Czech trick-master Jan Švankmajer, music by Tomislav Simović and an international cast led by Žarko Potočnjak, supported by Ljubiša Samardžić, Lucija Žulova and Ksenija Prohaska. This is also the third feature film by Dušan Vukotić, one of the most important Yugoslav authors of animated films, who was awarded an Oscar in 1962 for the short film Surrogate. Although he is the only Yugoslav Oscar winner, the disintegration of the country he belonged to has made his name far less present in the public eye than one might expect.