Screenwriting Festival Awards Itself
A special award for developing the Screenwriting Festival went to its own executive director, Marko Jovicic, and critic Djordje Bajic asks why the statuette bears Danilo Bata Stojkovic's name.
The evening opened at Trg kulture with Ivan Bosiljcic’s musical and poetic program titled “Our Evening,” before a procession of filmmakers and actors made its way to the Danilo Bata Stojkovic Summer Stage. There, under the slogan Half a Century of Golden Words, the 50th edition of the Screenwriting Festival opened in Vrnjacka Banja. The first statuette to change hands that night did not go to a screenwriter, but to the man who runs the festival.
The special award for contribution to the festival’s development and visibility, a statuette bearing the name of Danilo Bata Stojkovic, was presented by Vrnjacka Banja municipality president Boban Djurovic. It was accepted by Marko Jovicic, the festival’s executive director and a film director himself. In his thanks, Jovicic said the festival was not the work of one man, but of everyone involved in organizing it and the audience that gives it strength year after year.
That same evening also saw the presentation of awards with a much longer history. The “Gordan Mihic Golden Pen” for contribution to domestic screenwriting went to Predrag Perisic, screenwriter of “Ljubavni zivot Budimira Trajkovica,” “Nije lako s muskarcima” and “Policajac sa Petlovog brda.” Gold coins bearing the likeness of Emperor Constantine, awarded by the festival’s artistic council and the company Gold&Co, went to actress Gala Videnovic and director Goran Radovanovic. The film portion of the program opened with a screening of “Hajduci u Beogradu.”
The award given to the executive director drew a public reaction from film critic and writer Djordje Bajic.
“Half a century of the Screenwriting Festival should have been an occasion to honor the people who built, protected and improved it for decades. Instead, the festival’s special award for contribution to its development and visibility, which bears the name of Danilo Bata Stojkovic (why???), was given to Marko Jovicic Dimi, the man who is its current executive producer.”
Bajic adds that the decision did not surprise him and that he has not attended Vrnjacka Banja for several years now, even though he was a regular guest of the program for decades.
How Did the Competition Program Get Here?
The answer can be read in the numbers from the last five editions. Jovicic took over as executive director in 2022, and his first season was marked by the withdrawal of three films from competition: Dusan Milic’s “Mrak,” Sinisa Cvetic’s “Usekovanje” and Dusan Kovacevic’s “Nije lose biti covek.” Their authors and producers refused to have their screenings moved to a 4 p.m. slot in a cinema hall instead of the open air stage. The new management responded with the message “less ego, more pride” and a comparison of Vrnjacka Banja to Cannes.
The very next year, at the 47th edition, five of the fifteen competing films were produced by Zeljko Mitrovic’s Apollon, with two more titles from production circles close to that company also in competition. A balance still existed at that point, since the main awards went to films outside that circle. A year later, some of the season’s biggest domestic titles were missing, among them “Heroji Halijarda” and “Cuvari formule,” whose producers spoke publicly about the festival’s relationship with domestic cinema.
The collapse came in 2025. At the 49th edition, so few films were submitted that all of them were accepted, nine in total, six of them from Apollon’s production. The anniversary edition repeats the same pattern in a somewhat milder form: the competition selection has 13 films, again all of those that applied, four of them made by Apollon. Among them is “Bozicna avantura,” a film directed by none other than Marko Jovicic.
A Festival Without the People It Was Founded For
This is the second edition held without cooperation from the Association of Serbian Screenwriters, something we reported on before the opening as well. Vladimir Djurdjevic, the association’s president, leaves no room for misunderstanding.
“They did not call us, and we would not have accepted an invitation from the festival in this kind of organization. That festival was lost to us last year.”
Bajic’s objection goes a step beyond the jury’s personal decision and concerns the very format of the event.
“For several years now, this festival has looked less and less like a screenwriting festival and more and more like some kind of party, with red carpets, drones flying over the events and comedic promotional videos. That false glamour has changed its essence.”
That is the core of the problem with this anniversary edition. A festival founded to reward the written word is, half a century later, rewarding its own organization, with a statuette bearing the name of an actor whose best roles came from screenplays by Gordan Mihic and Dusan Kovacevic. A 50th birthday is an occasion to take stock, and the tally here is uncomfortable: fewer submitted films than ever, one production company holding a quarter of the selection, a guild of screenwriters that will not show up even when invited, and a recognition the institution handed to itself.
What remains is a program running through August 13, which, on top of everything, includes three premieres. Audiences in Vrnjacka Banja will get their five festival evenings. The only question is what is left of those evenings once the spotlights go out, because a festival that has lost the authors it exists for cannot fill that void with any statuette, not even the one it gave itself.
