Smederevo Fortress Turns Cinema for Dunav Film Fest

The Little Town inside Smederevo Fortress is not a place that lets a film sit as a mere screening. The wall behind the screen is older than anything projected on it, the Danube runs as a constant background note, and the audience sits inside a setting that already carries its own dramatic arc. That is where the ninth Dunav Film Fest opens on Friday, August 21 at 8 p.m.

The festival runs through August 26, staged under the patronage of the City of Smederevo and organized by the Smederevo Cultural Center. Over six days it will screen 40 films, split into four program strands and spread across four venues: alongside the Little Town of the fortress, screenings also move to Dunavski Park, the open ground by the Karadjordje mulberry tree, and the Cultural Center itself. The program map doubles as a map of the city, a choice that pulls the festival out of a single hall and turns it into something audiences walk between.

The competitive edge stays intact. A jury of film professionals decides the Dunavska ladja award for best film, and alongside the opening film, eight other works by directors from Danube basin countries are in contention. Among them is “I’ll Be Gone in June” by director Katharina Rivilis, known in Serbian by its working title “Odlazim u junu.”

“The House,” the Debut That Opens the Festival

The festival opens with “The House,” the first feature film by Tanja Brzakovic. Its central character is Jovan, an architect born in Serbia who spent most of his life in Berlin and who, after surviving a heart attack, faces his daughter’s push to move him into a retirement home. Before deciding, he travels with his grandson Nikola, whom he barely knows, to his native village in the Stara Planina mountains to sell the family property. What he finds there has nothing to do with nostalgia: a developer, backed by a corrupt system, is set on destroying what little remains of the village and its way of life. Grandfather and grandson end up drawn into the villagers’ fight, while family secrets surface along the way.

Brzakovic is a director and screenwriter born in Belgrade. She graduated in film and television directing from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts and completed postgraduate studies at the University of Hamburg. She works between Berlin and Belgrade, has focused mainly on documentary film and themes of identity and marginalized communities, and is a member of the European Film Academy. A move from that kind of documentary practice into a debut feature usually shows in the material, which is why “The House” invites viewing as a test of that transition as much as a film in its own right.

The screenplay is credited to Tanja Brzakovic and Hajdana Baletic, with Aleksandar Kalezic as director of photography, Slobodanka Pilic on production design, and Nebojsa Miljkovic as producer. The cast is led by Miralem Zubcevic, David Stancu, Jelena Bosanac, Anica Dobra, and Sanja Vejnovic, alongside actors from Pirot. The film is a co-production of Serbia, Croatia, and Germany, made by the production houses Talas film, 4Film, and Filmkraftverk, with support from the Serbian Film Center and the Croatian Audiovisual Centre.

Why a Fortress Instead of a Cinema Hall?

Because the choice of venue here does part of the work a program would otherwise have to carry on its own. A story about returning to one’s homeland, about a family property being sold off, and about a village disappearing, staged inside a fortress that has itself survived repeated attempts to erase it, gets a frame no multiplex hall could offer. The festival does not sell that as a special effect. It treats it as simply how things are, and that distinction matters.

Everything else comes down to scheduling. Forty films across six evenings means the program has to be chosen rather than followed in full, and the selection from Danube basin countries will screen in rotation with the city-venue slate. Organizers are publishing the full screening schedule on the festival’s official website.