NAFFIT Gets 17 Million Dinars, Film Contest Still Missing
The Ministry of Culture signed a contract in Zlatibor for 17 million dinars for NAFFIT 2026, and on the same day Minister Selakovic said he hopes the Film Center of Serbia will open its contest.
Two burgundy folders with gold lettering, the festival’s name in Cyrillic on the covers, were held up for the cameras somewhere against Zlatibor’s green backdrop, and that is, for now, the clearest picture of Serbia’s film year. The Ministry of Culture signed a contract on August 5 co-financing NAFFIT 2026, the National Film and Television Festival, with 17 million dinars, the third edition running at the same address. The contract was signed by Minister Nikola Selakovic and Danica Jevtic Sisovic, director of the Zlatibor Cultural Center.
What made the news out of that meeting, though, was not the figure, but a passing sentence about something still missing.
No Contest Since March
Alongside announcing that Russian cinema will be this year’s guest of honor, the minister said he hopes the Film Center of Serbia (FCS) will have its contests open before the festival itself begins.
I also hope that by the time the festival is held we will have the Film Center of Serbia’s contests open, because it matters greatly to us that our cinema keeps creating in the period ahead, especially after a turbulent stretch marked by major social upheaval in which cinema itself became one of the flashpoints on the field of Serbian culture.
Hope, as a rhetorical move, is an unusual choice for a minister speaking about an institution under his own authority. The FCS contest is not a natural disaster or a matter of season. It is a mechanism set by law that determines who gets to make films in this country at all.
What Happened to the 53 Films?
FCS announced in March that no contest would open this year, citing 13 million euros already committed to 53 films whose projects still need to be finished. The titles of those 53 films were never released. At the time, the institution said the joint effort of FCS and the Ministry of Culture was focused on completing those projects.
If the minister’s sentence in Zlatibor was a signal that the contest is coming back, it does not say whether that work is actually done. For producers who have had nowhere to submit a project for a second year running, the difference between those two things is the difference between a film and an empty calendar.
The Boycott Nobody Mentions
Last year’s NAFFIT, the first regular edition after the pilot run in 2024, was boycotted by seven film associations, essentially the entire industry. Their view was that it was wrong for the state to launch a festival of domestic film while failing to invest in domestic cinema, and that a festival cannot substitute for a support system that has collapsed.
That sentence still holds the key to understanding the contract signed in Zlatibor. Seventeen million dinars is money for the showcase, for the stage, the guests, the awards, the photographs. It is not money for shooting films. A festival by definition rewards what has already been made, and it is precisely that earlier link, production, that was left without its annual contest.
Why Zlatibor
The venue was proposed by director Predrag Gaga Antonijevic, one of the festival’s founders, and the choice has its own logic. The minister said at the signing that work on Antonijevic’s film Sretenje, about the era of the First and Second Serbian Uprisings, is nearing completion on Zlatibor.
Selakovic also said NAFFIT is the first festival in Serbia to award everyone who takes part in making a film or television work, both films and series, and that this sets it apart from other festivals.
Serbia, as a country with an enviable film tradition, was missing a festival like this one.
The model has existed in the region for decades, Pula has had one since the 1950s, so the argument about a national festival that was missing is entirely defensible. The only open question is the order of things. A national festival is a roof, and a roof is usually placed on a house that is already standing.
By September, when this year’s edition is expected, there will be two answers instead of one: what NAFFIT’s program looks like, and whether the FCS contest has actually been opened. The first answer is a matter of organization. The second is a matter of cultural policy.
