The film by Nicola Sorcinelli, starring Matilda De Angelis, leans heavily on the evocative power of images – images that, in numerous sequences, literally replace actions, dialogues, and interactions between the characters – and has just arrived in theaters after being presented as the sole Italian work at the Giornate degli Autori of the 83rd Venice Film Festival. Expansive mountain vistas, shot from above on plateaus where nature dominates unchallenged and remains almost pristine, are an essential, indeed fundamental, part of the narrative the director crafts about one of the most foundational and universal human experiences of our times: migration. Let us discover together the locations of Balcanica.
What it’s about
Afghanistan has banned music: this is why, to continue expressing their art, conductor Nazar and his son Jalil, a young tuba player, decide to leave the country and reach Italy. Like many other migrants, they embark on the Balkan route. It is here that they meet Greta, the character portrayed by Matilda De Angelis. Greta is a young doctor engaged for the first time in a humanitarian mission. Among the three, a strong and unexpectedly deep bond forms, capable of rekindling Nazar and Jalil’s hope in music and of forcing Greta to confront realities far from those she is used to. On the road that leads Nazar and Jalil back to freedom, Greta, too, will find herself making a choice that will forever change her life.
Where the film was shot
The film – an Italian-Serbian-Croatian co-production by Nightswim, Wildside, This and That Productions and Antitalent – was shot largely in southwestern Serbia, in areas truly traversed by the so-called “Balkan route” (one of the most traveled land migration routes today between the Middle East and Europe).
Sjenica
Among the Balcanica locations there is Sjenica. Today this Serbian city is above all a major commercial and military hub. Inhabited since prehistoric times, as evidenced by necropolises and numerous testimonies of ancient civilizations such as the Dardanians and the Illyrians, for centuries it has been an important waypoint for markets moving to and from Dubrovnik (Croatia) and a seat of representation for the Ottoman Empire which – not by coincidence – built a fortress here (today completely destroyed).
In Sjenica, nature dominates unabated and wild inside the Uvac Special Nature Reserve.
The Pešter Plateau
Even more so, the film is shot on the Pešter Plateau, another place where Balcanica was filmed, easily recognizable on screen for its harsh and irregular profiles. This karst field, located between 900 and 1200 meters above sea level and surrounded by seven different mountain ranges, is crossed by the – already mentioned – Uvac River, which, by eroding it over the centuries, has produced grooves, meanders, and sometimes true canyons (no wonder Pešter is sometimes likened to the “Serbian Colorado”).
The area is known for its particularly harsh climate, especially in winter when temperatures drop by several tens of degrees below zero: the famous winter of 1985, when in the village of Karajukića Bunari a temperature of -39.5° was recorded, the lowest ever recorded in Serbia.
In Nicola Sorcinelli’s film with Matilda De Angelis, this wild nature and these extreme conditions provide a vivid counterpoint to the drama of those who have no choice but to migrate in order to continue being themselves.
