Shadows over Balkan


Shadows over Balkan, also known as Black Sun, is a Serbian crime television series created by Dragan Bjelogrlić. Besides Bjelogrlić, screenplay was also done by Danica Pajović, Dejan Stojiljković and Vladimir Kecmanović, based on a story written by Stevan Koprivica. The series was done in co-production with Cobra Film, Radio Television of Serbia, Skopje Film Studio, Iskra, Radio Television of the Republic of Srpska, Macedonian Radio Television and The Film Agency of North Macedonia.
The series is set in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes during the Interwar period and follows the story of two Belgrade police department inspectors. The first season is set during the period just before the 6 January Dictatorship and follows the attempts of the two inspectors to solve the cases of sacrificial murders which were shaking the Belgrade public.
Dragan Bjelogrlić, Andrija Kuzmanović, Marija Bergam, Goran Bogdan, Aleksandr Galibin, Nenad Jezdić, Gordan Kičić, Nebojša Dugalić, Branimir Brstina, Srđan Todorović, Dragan Petrović, Nikola Đuričko, Bogdan Diklić, Voja Brajović, Sebastian Cavazza and Toni Mihajlovski are in the lead roles. First season ran from 22 October 2017 to 24 December 2017 on the RTS1 channel, as well as on many other television channels from former Yugoslavia.
The filming of the first season took place between October 2016 and June 2017, while the filming of the second season took place during 2018 and all ten episodes were aired on 8 November 2019. The first season was received very well by both the audience and critics, although it caused some controversy. Production, acting, editing and costume design have all been praised, as well as the themes the series deals with. Since March 2020, the series is available internationally on the Amazon Prime streaming service.

Premise

The series is divided in three seasons and encompasses the period between 1928 and 1940. The first season covers the period just before the assassination of the Croatian Member of National Assembly Stjepan Radić at the National Assembly of the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians and the subsequent establishment of the dictatorship.
Belgrade in between two World Wars was chosen as the main setting for the series. At the center of events we find the main characters – fifty year old criminal police inspector Andra Tanasijević Tane and his new associate, a young forensic by the name of Stanko Pletikosić. Belgrade is portrayed as a place where crime consists of classic robberies and murders, but whose biggest problems are wars between opium cartels, which use the city as just another route for smuggling the expensive and precious drug further into Europe and United States. The plot of the first season starts with a very peculiar and brutal murder which occurs at a costume ball where most of the Belgrade's social elite is gathered. Inspector Tanasijević soon realizes that the cause of the frequent eerie events, which are beginning to grow in number by the day, is an ancient relicHoly Lance – to which mystical powers are ascribed. He realizes that there are people who are ready to do anything to have it in their possession and is sucked into the tangled web of crime which all the obscure interest groups from the Balkans from that time are a part: the Russian White army of general Vrangel, the secret police of the Soviet Union, Black Hand, IMRO, Yugoslav communists, the underbelly of Belgrade and secret society called Thule. Following the traces of the committed crimes, the inspector starts looking for the relic with one goal in mind – to remove it from Belgrade and prevent more innocent deaths.
Series is planned to have three seasons. First season had ten episodes and dealt with the time period just before the 6. January dictatorship. Second season also had ten episodes and dealt with the time period before the Marseilles assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, while the third season will be set just before start of World War II in Yugoslavia.

Main roles

Screenings

Pre-premiere in Serbia was on 17 October 2017 at Yugoslav Film Archive. The series had a premiere in Serbia on RTS on 12 October 2017 and had a time slot at 8 pm, which has long been the default time slot for all Serbian and Yugoslav TV series. The first episode in Serbia was watched by more than 2.123.000 viewers and was the most watched media on that channel. The premiere in Bosnia and Herzegovina was at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival, where two episodes which received ovations were shown. The first season was airing on RTRS. In Montenegro the series is aired on RTCG 1, and in Macedonia on MRT 1. The series debuted in Macedonia at the 38. Manaki Brothers Film Festival in Bitola on 25 September 2017, and Dragan Bjelogrlić, Tomi Salkovski, Igor Ivanov Izi as well as the actors Marija Bergam, Jana Stojanovska, Pero Arsovski and Petar Atanovski addressed the audience.
There was a great controversy in Croatian media for not airing the first season, and the reasons cited were that it was due to the character of Ante Pavelić and also that Dragan Bjelogrlić himself forbade it. Bjelogrlić dismissed these claims and said that the main reason for the series not airing in Croatia was because no channel acquired the rights to air.
Bjelogrlić gave 2019 as the year in which the second season will be airing. The name of the series was translated into English as "Black Sun" which refers to the symbol that can be frequently in the series and also "Shadows over Balkan".

Production and inspiration

Dragan Bjelogrlić first got interested in the time period in which the series is set while filming the TV series as well as the movie version of Montevideo, God Bless You! He got interested in this period because he knew very little of it and he also thought that the Serbian public in general isn’t well informed about it: "Our destiny was such that we never learned much about that time period, it was almost never talked about. And those were important and in a way intense times, especially in Yugoslavia." The fact that Yugoslavia was called "Colombia of Europe" between the two Wars also served as an inspiration to him.
In his article for Blic he wrote that he didn’t want to compromise on any part of the show’s creation: "Shadows over Balkan is a piece for which I tried to make no compromises. There were no compromises on any level and in any phase of the show’s production. From the screenplay, story, themes, national divisions, aesthetics, direction to the budget and cost. I didn’t want to concern myself with the acquired taste of the RTS audience, ratings, political correctness, puritan moral principles, conservative historians, "first" and "second Serbia", and the like…" He seriously doubted in the success of the show, because "in aesthetic, dramaturgic and narrative aspects it was different than everything else he worked on in the past." He was inspired by a number of American, German, Italian, Scandinavian and Eastern European TV series, and as the main source of inspiration he cited Boardwalk Empire. He was also inspired by the connection between crime and corruption saying how "when he put some things in order, he came to the conclusion that there exists a historic constant which affects this region, because it is of utmost importance that when you are working on a piece of art which deals with the past, it is important to focus on the moment from which you are doing it."
The filming of the first season took place between 1 October 2016 and end of July 2017. The series was shot on many different locations in Belgrade, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a new film studio was also built in Baranda. Poor part of Belgrade from that period was constructed here -Jatagan Mala with fictive kafanas named "Kod Nišliju" and "Savsko bure", as well as the richer part with a marketplace, a candy shop and a quilt shop, as well as a barber shop. According to Bjelogrlić, 30% of the filming took place in Baranda. Some particular scenes were shot on Zrenjanin streets as well as in its City Hall. Some scenes were supposed to be filmed in Slovenia as well, RTV Slovenija was in support of this, but it was later abandoned due to financial reasons.
Together with Bjelogrlić, the screenplay was worked on by screenwriters Danica Pajović, Dejan Stojiljković and Vladimir Kecmanović adapted to a film story by Stevan Koprivica. Koprivica worked on some of the early episodes, and according to Danica Pajović, "the story was a Conan-Doyle type mystic drama about two inspectors who are working on resolving a series of sacrificial murders in Belgrade set between the two Wars. Bjelogrlić then expanded the theme to the Belgrade underbelly and opium trade in Yugoslavia and convoluted the story to such an extent that Dejan Stojiljković and I had to join the screenwriters team, with Vladimir Kecmanović also joining us later." According to his own words, this was the first time Dejan Stojiljković wrote a screenplay for a movie or a TV series.
Robert Pešut "Magnifico", with whom Bjelogrlić already collaborated on Montevideo , worked on the soundtrack for the series. Ognjen "Ogi" Radivojević sang the song in the title sequence, and he was chosen by Magnifico and Bjelogrlić "because of his specific tone of voice and emotions which emerge from his vocal range." Other notable musicians took part in series, such as Nikola Pejaković, Ksenija Kuljača etc.