Renowned Serbian director, screenwriter and producer Milorad Milinkovic is filming a TV show. He is also on the campaign trail after his new film The Duke and the Poet (Što se bore misli moje) was selected by Serbia as its nominee for Best International Feature at the Oscars 2024. The film will be screened at the Chicago Serbian Film Festival on Saturday, December 9 at 3:30 p.m., where director Milorad Milinkovic and executive producer Miroslav Mogorovic will be in attendance.
The Film Verdict: What’s life like these days, juggling your commitments to the Serbian game show The Chase, where I understand you’re one of the chasers, and an intercontinental campaign for the Oscars?
Milorad Milinkovic: Life is nothing but very pleasant after such a success. Chasing competitors has always been a kind of personal entertainment and fun that has brought me a few perks. I take this show very seriously, to be clear, but representing our country for such a prestigious award brings a lot more responsibility and pleasure. So it’s not difficult to decide what comes first in my mind.
The Film Verdict: In the 30 years you’ve been writing, directing and producing films, you’ve become famous for groundbreaking film comedies like Obituary for Escobar and Frozen Stiff. What attracted you to the tragic story of the assassinated Serbian leader, Duke Mihailo Obrenovic? You tell it with great irony and lightness in The Duke and the Poet.
Milorad Milinkovic: The story of Prince Mihailo is one of many tragic stories in Serbian history. His reign was short for the period in question, only eight years, and he launched numerous reforms in Serbian politics, the army and culture. He de facto liberated much of the country from centuries of Turkish occupation. And his assassination has never been explained. We have never known why he was so brutally killed, nor who ordered this heinous crime, only who directly carried it out. And after the assassination, these men were convicted and killed on the spot. So this story offers the authors a great opportunity for criminal investigation and plenty of space for the imagination.
The Film Verdict: It’s a film full of characters and motivations. How did you and your co-writer Dragoljub Stojkovic go about studying these historical figures and choosing the actors who would embody them?
Milorad Milinkovic: Well, I don’t think either Dragoljub or I had much trouble. It was a great experience, very interesting and enriching. We’re both history buffs, and we knew a lot of the story before we even started. Our museums and archives have done an excellent job of preserving facts and artifacts. We saw the clothes Prince Mihailo was wearing at the time of his death, we knew exactly where the wounds had been inflicted, not to mention the many books, documents and other materials to which we had access. So it was more about excitement and thrills than hard work. As for the second part of your question, Serbia is a relatively small country, and we know most of the actors in person, so the choice wasn’t very difficult. We had to think of several very young actors who had important roles in the film, but that was decided after casting, as usual.
The Film Verdict: One of the film’s striking features is its bold use of time. The story is divided between the days leading up to Duke Obrenovic’s assassination – a death predicted and expected by almost everyone – and flashbacks to the plot to kill him, his love for his mistress Katarina, and the tensions between Serbia, Turkey and Austria. What role did editor-in-chief Stevan Maric play in setting up this project?
Milorad Milinkovic: Stevan’s role was considerable and overwhelming. We jumped around a lot in time, which was the only way to explain all the little parts of this story, without which it wouldn’t be understandable at all. So his task was difficult despite our efforts to be as precise as we could — besides myself, I’m thinking of Dragoljub, our cinematographer Dalibor Tonkovic, production designer Ana Miloševic, composer Ana Krstajic, costume designer Dragica Lauševic, the actors and all the other crew members.
The Film Verdict: In the pivotal role, actor Dragan Micanovic imbues the Duke with a Hamlet-like ambivalence: he is both the ruler of a country on the brink of war and a sensitive soul who writes poetry and is deeply in love with a woman he cannot marry. He has gone down in history as an absolute but enlightened monarch — is that how you see him?
Milorad Milinkovic: Well, yes, the Prince was not unlike Hamlet. From a very young age, he was in charge of a very windswept and troubled country. His first love happened in exile, he surely suffered a lot and that’s what shaped him as a poet. The song he wrote, which we used as the Serbian title of the film, is an important part of our Serbian musical heritage, played to this day in every tavern, as well as concert halls. In my opinion, Dragan Micanovic is one of Serbia’s greatest actors, and his presence in each of his scenes is overwhelming. He portrayed the character of Prince Mihailo Obrenovic III as faithfully as possible, introducing us to the only truly enlightened monarch in Eastern Europe at the time. Dragan presented us with all the pain, hardship and little joy the Prince found in his reign and, on the other hand, we clearly saw a middle-aged man troubled by his great love for a relatively close cousin. So he succeeded in playing the role of an absolutist monarch, but as enlightened as it was possible to be in 1868. That’s exactly how I see it, and this enlightenment is a part of Serbian history that I miss.
