After several recent success stories by some Croatian movies and TV shows on the various international broadcasting platforms, that we’ve already extensively written about (such as The Paper, You Carry Me and others), more good news coming from one of those platforms: Srbenka, a documentary by Nebojša Slijepčević is going to appear on HBO!
It premiered last year in Rijeka and has since received numerous awards at Croatian and international festivals (awards in Cannes, Sarajevo, Linz, Warsaw; the European Film Academy put it on their list of the top 15 European documentaries in 2018). The documentary’s television premiere will take place on June the 20th on HBO.
The documentary, as we’ve already reported, follows the preparation and the rehearsals for the theatre play “Aleksandra Zec” by Oliver Frljić, which was performed at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Sušak, Rijeka. It deals with the devastating topics of nationalism and xenophobia through examining the lives of the children that are part of the Serbian minority, and who were born years after the Homeland War was finished. The title of the play is the name of the 12-year old girl who was killed along with the rest of her family on the eve of the Homeland War in Zagreb.
Nebojša Slijepčević, the director, said that he sees HBO as the most important production company in the world, that values the original documentaries which don’t shy away from difficult topics. He’s happy that Srbenka will be the first Croatian documentary on the platform, and he hopes that they will pave the road for other Croatian documentaries. He stresses the fact that many high-quality documentaries are made in Croatia, so he hopes that Srbenka won’t be the sole entry in HBO’s documentary catalogue. He hopes that Croatian audiences will get to see the documentary on Croatian Radiotelevision, not only on HBO.
After this story was originally published, HBO confirmed to us that Srbenka will be shown on HBO channels and later available online in the Adria Region (meaning Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bulgaria). The premiere on the HBO channel will be on June 20th, at 9:25 pm, and it will be available online from June 1st.
And Vanja Jambrović, one of the producers of the film, confirmed on Facebook that Croatian Radiotelevision will not be showing this documentary, as she’d received an email informing her of that decision.
