Lidija Vukicevic in Sarajevo: What Am I, Merchandise?

Actress Lidija Vukicevic spoke out in a statement to the media on August 31, at 9:36 a.m., just two days after a criminal complaint was filed against her in Sarajevo, and explained openly why she has turned down roles throughout her career that didn’t sit right with her.

Vukicevic is currently in Sarajevo filming the series Bos il’ Hadzija, directed by Enver Puska. She drew attention to herself when she left heart, prayer and broken-heart emojis under an Instagram post dedicated to Ratko Mladic that said the general would live forever. The reaction set off a wave of comments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and on August 30 a criminal complaint was filed against her with the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to media reports, the initiative was launched by a person identifying themselves as Ervin.

The appeal that has since spread across social media carries five demands: the actress’s immediate removal from the project, the termination of her engagement, a public statement from the production and the director, a halt to filming if she remains in the series, and the disclosure of the names of all the project’s sponsors and financiers. As of August 31, neither the production nor director Enver Puska had publicly responded to the appeal.

Vukicevic answers all of it, she says, the way she has lived her whole life, directly.

Unfortunately, I am very strict and I tell people the truth to their face. That has cost me both in friendships and in work. For example, I tell a director right away what I won’t do. I don’t know why they scan me before I’ve even signed the contract, what am I, merchandise?!

Vukicevic said in a statement to the media, describing the principle on which she has built her entire career.

As the most extreme example, she points to the series Vuk Karadzic. She was supposed to be part of the project, had read through the literature, and a costume had already been made for her, but in the end filming never happened.

I read through all the literature, I was supposed to be in that series, a costume was made, and in the end I didn’t perform because I was direct and said that what they had in mind didn’t justify the role I play.

She speaks of the same principle when it comes to intimate scenes.

I’m not saying an actress shouldn’t undress. Of course she should. I don’t sell tomatoes at the market, so it’s not like I refuse to take my clothes off. She should, but when the character has a justification for it, because in that case it isn’t viewed as pornography, it’s an integral part of the character. But if the goal is for the actress to undress and be put on a poster just to draw in the audience and make as much money as possible on that film, then that film can’t be made with me.

That stance, she says, also cost her steady work. After returning from abroad, she went through a stretch of as long as ten years without a single role.

There were periods when I didn’t work for 10 years after I came back from abroad. No one called me to work, many didn’t even know I had returned to Serbia. I managed on my own. I opened my own acting school, I wrote a monodrama, I tried that too. I opened the doors for myself.

She says she has never thought of money as a measure of success.

“Money never interested me too much,” Vukicevic said in a statement to the media.

The pressure over the Mladic post, in the meantime, hasn’t changed her plans in Sarajevo. In an interview with Kurir, she said that for safety reasons she had been offered a change of hotel, from the one she is staying at in the city center, but that she had declined.

They wanted to change my hotel so I’d be safer, but I won’t change hotels because of certain individuals. I have no problem going out on the street.

She added that she keeps going out into the city despite advice to avoid doing so.

“Right now I’m going to take a walk through the center of Sarajevo. Even though they told me not to go out, I will, I’m not a prisoner,” she told Kurir.

The criminal complaint filed with the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Ervin remains, for now, the only formal step in the whole story. Whether the production of the series Bos il’ Hadzija will respond to the demand for a public statement, or whether filming will continue unchanged, is not yet known.