Crne ptice (1967)

Anecdotes

Black Birds is a 1967 Yugoslavian war drama film directed by Eduard Galić.

Background and production

By the time Eduard Galić set out to direct Black Birds, his debut feature film, he was already an established television director and an author of award-winning documentaries. He developed an interest in a screenplay written by Grgo Gamulin, Galić's former father-in-law, that drew heavily on his personal experiences in World War II. As a long-time leftist, Gamulin spent the entire war imprisoned by the regime of the Independent State of Croatia.

Galić secured funding for the film and, after negotiations with Jadran Film fell through, he and Fadil Hadžić founded Most, an independent production collective. The arrangements were made to produce Black Birds and Hadžić's Protest in partnership with Viba Film, a Slovene production company.

Galić's work on the screenplay created a conflict with Gamulin. While the Gamulin's original work was a straightforward action drama, Galić preferred the then highly influential auteur film. Together with Zoran Tadić, the assistant director, and Petar Krelja, Galić developed a new outline of the film in which three central characters were a psalm-quoting Ustasha lieutenant (Šovagović), an engineer tasked with blowing up the bridge (Mirić), and an…

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