In depth · Balkan cinema
Belgrade on film: Avala, the Kinoteka, Kusturica and the stars
Our long read on Balkan cinema tells the story of the whole region; this page gathers the films, the stars and the places that belong to Belgrade, with official trailers wherever they exist.
Updated October 2026
The film capital of Yugoslavia
Belgrade was the busiest film city of Yugoslavia. The Avala Film studios, founded in 1946 on the wooded hill of Košutnjak, made hundreds of films, and the Yugoslav Film Archive, the Kinoteka, has been collecting the world’s cinema since 1949; its home on Uzun Mirkova has a museum of film history, and its hall on Kosovska street shows the classics every week. FEST, the city’s international festival, has opened the film year every winter since 1971.
Many of the great names were born or trained here: Dušan Makavejev, whose Innocence Unprotected won a Silver Bear in Berlin; Milena Dravić, who won at Cannes for Special Treatment; Miki Manojlović, the star of Kusturica’s two Palmes d’Or; and Dragan Bjelogrlić, who turned director with Montevideo, God Bless You! (2010).
The Yugoslav Film Archive (Kinoteka) Kinoteka hall at Kosovska 11 Cinema in Belgrade: the back story
Who’s Singin’ Over There? and the Deliblato Sands
Slobodan Šijan’s comedy of 1980, written by Dušan Kovačević, follows a bus of bickering passengers towards Belgrade on the eve of the Second World War; much of it was filmed on the Deliblato Sands, the sandy steppe east of the city. Belgraders can quote it line by line, and it is the perfect first film for anyone curious about the city’s humour.
Kusturica, Johnny Depp and the wooden village
In the mountains of western Serbia, Emir Kusturica built the wooden village of Drvengrad on Mećavnik hill for his film Life Is a Miracle (2004), shot around the Šargan Eight mountain railway. Since 2008 it has hosted his Küstendorf Film and Music Festival every January, and Johnny Depp, the star of Kusturica’s Arizona Dream, came in 2010, when a life-size statue of him was unveiled there. You can stay in the village, eat in its restaurant and ride the Šargan Eight the same day.
Drvengrad (Mećavnik) Mokra Gora & the Šargan Eight Trains on Film Balkan Cinema: our long read on the ULTIMATE Regions guide
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Sources: the Festival de Cannes (festival-cannes.com), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (oscars.org), the Berlinale and the Venice Biennale archives, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (havc.hr), the AFI Catalog, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA, Sixth Tone, SBS and the festival press, checked on 25 October 2026. Trailers are embedded from the official YouTube channels of each film’s producer, distributor or national film centre; where none exists online, we leave it out. Stories about stars and the region are many, and we print only those we can check.