Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996) on Netflix
Milan and his Bosniak friend Halil grow up in the same village. War comes, they take opposing sides, and Milan's Serb squad is trapped in a tunnel by Bosniak fighters.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb8.6/1019,200 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Plot summary
Milan and Halil grow up in the same eastern Bosnian village, where a tunnel stands disused and a local tale warns that a drekavac sleeps inside it. By the spring of 1992 the two are playing streetball outside Slobo's kafana, and talk of war has reached the village. Milan joins the Army of Republika Srpska in 1994. His squad includes Velja, a burglar from Belgrade who took his younger brother's place in the draft; Petar, a schoolteacher who reads from a burnt diary; Brzi, a heroin addict; Laza, a family man who volunteered; Viljuška, who carries a fork; Captain Gvozden, an officer who still believes in Yugoslavia; and Marko. Encircled by Bosniak fighters at night, Milan tells his squad mates to run to the tunnel he was afraid to enter as a child.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shooting on Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, then titled Tunel, began in April 1995 around Višegrad, often on former battlefields, but after 85 shooting days that July the production was halted for lack of funds, seven days short of completion. A new round of fund-raising let it resume in November 1995 and finish in early 1996.
- Srđan Dragojević's film was the first Serbian film to show the Serbian side of the Bosnian War committing atrocities and ethnic cleansing, and its title is an ironic comment on the protagonists' actions in a Bosnian village.
- The Venice Film Festival refused the film, its director Gillo Pontecorvo calling it "fascist cinema"; Berlin and Cannes film festivals had also rejected it earlier that year.
- The screenplay was based on a Vanja Bulić long-form article in Duga magazine about a real incident in eastern Bosnia at the opening stages of the Bosnian War. After the film's success, Bulić expanded the article into a novel, Tunel.
