The Wounds (1998)

Interesting facts

The Wounds is a 1998 Serbian drama film written and directed by Srđan Dragojević. It depicts the violent lives of two boys in Belgrade as they aspire to make names for themselves in the city's underworld. The story takes place throughout the 1990s, against the backdrop of Yugoslav Wars and growing ethnic hatred.

Production

With the positive critical reaction to his 1996 film Lepa sela lepo gore on the festival circuit throughout North America, thirty-three-year-old director Dragojević ended up signing with the William Morris Agency whose representatives first approached him at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Simultaneously, back home in Serbia he had two film ideas in the early stages of development—epic World War I story St. George Slays the Dragon and a smaller film based on a television news report about two teenage criminals in contemporary Belgrade—both of which his Serbian producers, Cobra Film owned by the Bjelogrlić brothers (Goran and Dragan), wanted him to do before potentially leaving for the United States.

The story is built around a real-life occurrence depicted in a 1994 episode of Tragač, television series hosted and produced by Predrag Jeremić (1962-2022) that aired on RTV Studio B, about Mirko "Beša" Bešević and Marko "Kameni" Pejković—two criminally-involved Belgrade adolescents who started out as friends before viciously turning on one another.

Dragojević was reportedly told of this by friends and decided to use it as basis for a screenplay he says he wrote in thirteen days. He furthermore claims to have purposely avoided watching the actual TV report because he didn't want to have his writing, casting, and directorial decisions subconsciously influenced by images or language in it.

After finally seeing the report upon film's completion, Dragojević said he was amazed with the visual and behavioural similarities between the two sets of teens.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.