Kangaroo Comes Home Premieres September 23 at Sava Centar

Tickets for the premiere of Kangaroo Comes Home are already on sale on tickets.rs, even though the date on the ticket, September 23, is still nearly two weeks away. Sava Centar is where audiences will first see a new version of a character many remember from the original film, but the producers underlined one thing as soon as the news broke: this is not a sequel. It is a separate story built around the same character, placed in a new time and new circumstances.

Miroslav Momcilovic wrote and directed the film, and this time the lead role belongs to Andrija Kuzmanovic. The cast also includes Jelisaveta Orasanin, Vesna Cipcic, Natasa Ninkovic, Oliver Conic, Ivana Dudic, Zoran Vukajlovic and Vladimir Kovacevic, with special guests announced but not yet named. The role of the main character’s fiancee, Elektra, goes to Ciama Atuanga, an actress based in London, a detail that already hints at where the character’s return journey begins.

That covers what has been confirmed ahead of the premiere. What remains open until September 23 is whether the film, in what its lead actor calls new clothes, actually carries a new idea, or whether it is simply a familiar name in a refreshed package.

The story follows a goalkeeper who abruptly cuts short his career in England and returns to Serbia, while a television crew films his homecoming for a documentary. He brings his fiancee Elektra along, and his plan to help his old club, his friends and his hometown quickly grows into something he can no longer control. That gap between intention and consequence is where the film sets its tone.

Andrija Kuzmanovic described that gap himself in the film’s announcement, and his words come closest to summing up what audiences can expect:

This is not a sequel, this is the film in new clothes, a new era, social commentary on our society. Kangaroo comes home in grand style, full of plans and patriotic fervor. He is financially secure, but he has a pile of other problems. Eager to help the club where he started out and his friends, he sinks in deep. The Serbia he left when his playing career began is not the same Serbia he is returning to. And he is not the same young man who set off into the glittering world of football. Fame, money and nightlife have left their mark. The film offers a satirical look at contemporary society, our mentality, our ambitions and our absurdities.

What sets this description apart from the usual promotional line is that the actor is not talking about an audience that will laugh, but about a country that has changed faster than its own protagonist. Kangaroo arrives carrying patriotic fervor at the exact moment it becomes clear that fervor alone solves none of the problems he left behind when he departed.

A satire about a goalkeeper who comes back rich, self-assured and unprepared for the country he left reads beyond football too, as a story about anyone who left young and came home convinced they still knew how things should work. Whether Momcilovic uses that premise for something sharper than a genre comedy about homecoming, or whether the patriotic fervor stays a line from the trailer, only the film itself will show.

What is certain before the premiere is that the production is aiming not to repeat the old story but to turn it into a frame for something new, and that the cast, from Ninkovic to Cipcic, brings enough experience to carry that ambition seriously. Whether the script delivers on its promise of social commentary, or settles for a lighter comedy about mentality, will become clear on September 23, when Kangaroo stands before an audience for the first time at Sava Centar.

After the Belgrade premiere, the film opens in cinemas across Serbia and the region, though the producers have not yet announced an exact date for the wider release.