THE SOLDIER
Serbia, Germany, United Kingdom I 90 min
Director: Aleksandar Nikolić
Producer: Miloš Ivanović
Editor: Aleksandar Nikolić
Production company: Set Sales Film
Made entirely out of archive collected from many different conflicts, this anti-war film follows an archetypal soldier on his journey from a young recruit to a disillusioned veteran.
Told from the world-weary perspective of THE SOLDIER - who has fought and died in various wars since time immemorial - the film edits together some of the most dramatic documentary footage ever recorded to explore humanity's addiction to war.
Mixing traditional archive with unseen new footage filmed by soldiers themselves, the film constructs a composite protagonist, the Soldier. Following The Soldier through brutal training, graduation, marriage and then the war itself, we watch a young idealist turn into a Hobbesian cynic by the devastating logic of war. In pursuit of victory, The Soldier becomes ever more brutal, but so do his enemies. By the end of the film, The Soldier realizes that war can only ever lead to more war. He throws away his guns and medals. But for how long?
ALEKSANDAR NIKOLIĆ / IMDB
Born in 1979 in Belgrade, ALEKSANDAR moved to London shortly after the war started in former Yugoslavia. He has been working in film and television since 2003. In parallel to editing high profile TV documentaries for the BBC, PBS and CH4, Aleksandar has written and directed two feature documentaries that screened at Sarajevo, One World, Raindance, Jihlava and others. THE SERBIAN LAWYER had cinema distribution in Germany and was broadcast on NHK. He has also edited more than 20 historical one-offs and series with heavy use of archive.
Director’s statement
When in 1992, still as a child, I left Yugoslavia with my parents, I thought that I was leaving the specter of war forever. We came to the UK, a country that had for so long been a beacon of stability, democracy and the rule of law. My hope was that one day my home country, modeling itself on the good example of my adopted country, would evolve past its rampant nationalism to embrace the liberal values that have brought the Western world such prosperity since WW2. Instead, the reverse has happened. Nationalism, similar to the nationalism that broke up Yugoslavia, has been on the rise all over the world. A devastating war is again taking place in Europe and the possibility of a full blown world war is again all too real. But should we be so surprised? In all of human history, times of prolonged peace have been very rare. Why? Why do we keep making the same mistakes? This is the central topic of our film and one of the most urgent questions of today.
MILOŠ IVANOVIĆ / IMDB
MILOŠ IVANOVIĆ paved his way into the film industry by producing successful short animated films as part of trans-media project Radiovision. Parallel to producing animated films, he pursued both documentary and fiction stories with the same passion. He is the producer of the 2019 IDFA film SPEAK SO I CAN SEE YOU, an international co-production, recipient of Eurimages lab award and DOHA post-production grant. In 2019 he co-founded a Belgrade based company Set Sail Films.
Where are we at?
Production budget: 600.000,00 EUR
Needed for completion: 450.000,00 EUR
Territories: Worldwide
Expected release: 1.5.2023
Production company profile
SET SAIL FILMS is a Belgrade based film production company that cherishes strong author voices across fiction and documentary. Our projects have been supported by MEDIA, Eurimages, Film center Serbia, Hubert Bals and DOHA film institute among others. SPEAK SO I CAN SEE YOU (2019) premiered at IDFA in Europe and MOMA in the US.
We are working together with Berlin based InselFilm Produktion which has collaborated with ZDF, ARTE, BBC and NHK to produce 13 creative documentaries, screening at Cannes, IDFA, Locarno and most other major festivals.