Serbia Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Marta Balaga Nina Kiri, known for her role as Alma on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has joined the cast of dystopian sci-fi adventure “Absolution.” The title will be brought onto the market at Cannes’ Marché du Film Frontières platform, featuring in its Proof of Concept strand.    The Serbian-Canadian actor is no stranger to genre, having appeared in “The Heretics,” “The Haunted House on Kirby Road” or “Let Her Out.” Soon, she will also be spotted in Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails” alongside Jessie Buckley.  Directed by Filip Kovacevic, “Absolution” – a co-production between Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro – takes place in a barren wasteland, far removed from the mythical city of gods, with only one human settlement left. 

Frontières Platform, organized with the Fantasia Film Festival.  Focusing on genre, the Frontières showcase is emerging as one of the Marché du Film’s biggest market plays, supercharged by this year’s milestone Oscar triumph of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,”  smart genre’s popularity among an emerging generation of filmmakers and its rising tide as one of the most resilient of independent movie market propositions.  

Carlos Alcaraz volunteers during the Miami Open Unites campaign on Monday (March 20) in Miami, Fla.

Sead Haksabanovic has sparked injury fears after the Celtic winger was surprisingly hooked at half-time during Montenegro's win over Bulgaria.

Eurovision 2023 Semi-Final running orders have been revealed – check it out below.The 2023 Eurovision Song Contest will take place at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool from May 9-13, with Mae Muller set to represent the UK with ‘I Wrote A Song’.The UK city was announced to stage the contest on behalf of Ukraine, after organisers deemed the country unable to host the event due to the ongoing war with Russia.You can find all the songs that are entered for this year’s competition here.This week, Eurovision shared the running order for the Semi-Final shows, which take place on Tuesday, May 9 and Thursday, May 11.Norway will kick off proceedings for the first Semi-Final, closed out 15 acts later with a performance by Finland. The second event is set to be opened by Denmark, with Australia hitting the stage last.We got #Eurovision2023 Semi-Final running orders ✨➡️ https://t.co/V1tz85qvRD pic.twitter.com/hSjYqudp6j— Eurovision Song Contest (@Eurovision) March 22, 2023The Big Five participants – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom, which make the biggest financial contributions to the contest – along with Ukraine, automatically qualify for the Grand Final.Check out the full schedule below.First Semi-Final Eurovision 20231. Norway2. Malta3. Serbia4. Latvia5. Portugal6. Ireland7. Croatia8. Switzerland9. Israel10. Moldova11. Sweden12. Azerbaijan13. Czechia14. Netherlands15. FinlandSecond Semi-Final Eurovision 20231. Denmark2. Armenia3. Romania4. Estonia5. Belgium6. Cyprus7. Iceland8. Greece9. Poland10. Slovenia11. Georgia12. San Marino13. Austria14. Albania15. Lithuania16. AustraliaMeanwhile, Eurovision final 2023 tickets sold out in just 36 minutes.Tickets for all nine shows including the live Grand Final went on sale

Manchester United are reportedly currently first in line to bid for Juventus striker Dusan Vlahovic, should they want him.

Rising tennis star Ben Shelton takes a silly photo with a young fan during Kids’ Day during the Mexican Open tennis tournament – aka Abierto Mexicano de Tenis – in Acapulco, Mexico on Sunday (February 26).

Taylor Fritz just reached a new career-high!

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix, facing more competition globally in the streaming wars, has cut pricing in more than 100 markets worldwide — in some cases, chopping the price of monthly plans in half — to boost subscriber acquisition and retention. The streamer has reduced prices in countries and territories across Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Netflix is not reducing prices in North America or Western Europe, its most mature markets. All told, the price reductions span more than 100 markets, according to research firm Ampere Analysis (see list, below). Those include Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Kenya, Iran, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Slovenia and Bulgaria.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Watching “Kiss the Future,” a documentary about the band U2’s relationship with wartorn Sarajevo in the 1990s, it’s hard not to think: “We’ve seen this movie before.” That’s not to do with the doc itself so much as how aspects of the 30-year-old footage from Bosnia’s brutal civil war parallel what we’ve seen in the news coverage coming out of Ukraine for the past year. Both involve stranger-than-fiction (or stranger-than-fascism) scenarios of cosmopolitan cities suddenly subject to state terrorism, which makes the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck-produced film coincidentally timely, for all its belatedness. In a sense, “Kiss the Future” is the story of a long-distance romance, between a superstar rock quartet reaching its peak and a once-grand metropolis that’s bottoming out. In the early ’90s, genocidally minded Serbian president Slobodan Milošević tried to subject the happily mixed population of Sarajevo to ethnic cleansing by any means necessary. The area’s young people fought back in whatever spirit-lifting way they could — including founding underground discos, forming punk bands and otherwise keeping the arts alive as they dodged shelling and snipers. An American activist, Bill Carter, had the idea to enlist the stadium-filling U2 in publicizing their plight, which led to nightly satellite appearances by Sarajevo locals on the giant screens of the “Zoo TV” tour’s European leg.

Christopher Vourlias Firefly Productions is prepping a new high-end drama that the Belgrade-based outfit is billing as Serbia’s first ever superhero series. “Generation Tesla” is based on the famed Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla, best known for his pioneering work on electricity. In the series Tesla creates an electric frequency at the time of his death that opens a portal to a new dimension, where many of his unfinished projects and ideas are hidden. As the keeper of a vast trove of secrets and knowledge, Tesla must confront the greatest enemy ever known to man, who is looking to steal the secret of this mysterious frequency to rule the world. To fight him, Tesla assembles a team of superheroes, whom he contacts through a video game-obsessed teenager, in order to save the planet.

Marta Balaga Crime shows look for a new angle, argued Berlinale Series participants on Monday.  There is no shortage of new offerings, from Berlinale Market Selects’ “Two Sides of the Abyss,” Serbia’s “The Fall” or South Africa’s “Donkerbos,” created by Nico Scheepers, to China’s melancholic, decades-spanning “Why Try to Change Me Now,” with Golden Bear winner Yinan Diao attached as executive producer. But while there is still an appetite for traditional detective stories, producers and broadcasters are venturing out of the “damaged, middle-aged white detective slot on a Sunday night,” suggested All3Media International’s Rachel Glaister. They are also thinking about their younger audience.

For almost four years of siege in the 1990s, the city of Sarajevo concussed from shelling, the rumblings of armored vehicles and the repeated pop of sniper fire.

First Look, the works-in-progress strand of the Locarno film festival’s industry section, is set to highlight independent UK films for its 2023 edition.

Brent Simon There’s no shortage of movies that gauzily peddle the notion of art as a balm. Few, however, are as invested in the charged immediacy of art’s relationship to real-life pain as “Kiss the Future,” a documentary enjoying its world premiere Feb. 19 in the Berlinale Special slot, with Fifth Season and WME handling worldwide sales. Directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain, and based on American-born aid worker Bill Carter’s “Fools Rush in: A Memoir” (the pair share a screen story credit), the film is a savvy mélange of history and cultural portraiture that affectingly chronicles the struggle of Sarajevo’s besieged civilians during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Platoon One Films, co-producers of Berlin Film Festival Panorama strand title “Ghaath” (“Ambush”), has seven films in the works. Four films are in advanced development. Police procedural “Bayan” by Bikas Mishra (“Chauranga”) was developed at Film Independent’s Global Media Makers program in Los Angeles and the film is supported by the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund. Drama “Kadminche,” the feature directorial debut of Tushar Paranjape, writer of Berlin Crystal Bear winner “Killa,” has Rinku Rajguru (“Sairat”) attached to star. Action fantasy film “Don’t Sleep” will mark the Hindi-language debut of Arun Bose (Malayalam-language “Luca”). And Agrim Joshi and Debojit Das Purkayastha, creators of series “Candy” for Viacom18 streamer Voot Select, will make their feature directorial debut with psychological thriller “Influenzaa.”

Gerard Pique managed to win four Champions League titles during his glittering career.

Manchester United hero Dimitar Berbatov has picked out Juventus striker Dusan Vlahovic as an ideal transfer alternative to Harry Kane or Victor Osimhen.

EXCLUSIVE: Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has boarded international sales on Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping For Beginners starring top Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca as an unmaternal, gay woman who suddenly finds herself responsible for her partner’s two young daughters.  

EXCLUSIVE: Lena Headey (Game Of Thrones), Yara Shahidi (Grown-ish), Isabela Merced (Father Of The Bride), Lana Condor (Moonshot), Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place) and Iris Apatow (The Bubble) are set to lead buzzy action-thriller Ballerina Overdrive, which will be produced by Deadpool, Bullet Train, John Wick and Fast And The Furious director David Leitch.

Although trans rights are now the subject of a simmering culture war in America and the U.K., that conflict is largely predicated on the increasing visibility of trans women at a time where self-ID is controversially becoming the norm. Stories of trans men, however, tend to go under the radar, and this remarkable New York-set debut from Chilean-Serbian director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz goes some way to redressing that imbalance. Featuring a pitch-perfect performance from Puerto Rican/Greek actor Lío Mehiel, so far mostly known for the Apple show WeCrashed and a number of shorts, U.S. Dramatic Competition entry Mutt feels like an important but — for reasons about to be explained — perhaps interstitial film in the history of LGBTQ+ cinema, being fully cognizant of the fact that it is set and was made in a between-time that reflects the lead character’s existential sense of limbo.

A pandemic and the closure of cinemas didn’t stop Cannes Film Festival-winning Nicolas Winding Refn from creating, the Drive filmmaker hunkering down with his family to make the new noir Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy which drops on Thursday, January 5.

Eder Flag in Oak Creek, Wisc. makes American flags – a huge number of them. More than five million a year, in fact. 

Production is underway in Serbia for a fourth season of Miss Scarlet and The Duke, the Masterpiece mystery starring Kate Phillips (The Crown, Wolf Hall) as the first-ever female detective in Victorian London. The PBS series also features Stuart Martin (Jamestown, Army Of Thieves) as her childhood friend, professional colleague and potential love interest Inspector William “The Duke” Wellington.

Jane the Virgin will become a proud young Zulu woman in a South African remake of the romantic comedy-drama format.

The United States went head-to-head with England on Friday in a historic World Cup match that drew 15.4M viewers for Fox.

‘Survivor UK’ Maker Remarkable Entertainment Sets New Top Team

The 35th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open with Iranian-Dutch filmmaker Niki Padidar’s All You See.

Manchester United are reportedly 'interested in signing' James Maddison from Leicester City.

The magical city of Lisbon will host EuroPride in 2025 (Photo: Deensel / Wikimedia)

Portugal manager Fernando Santos has suggested he will not drop Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo to the bench.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Connie Nielsen is set to star in the psychological thriller “Follow Me” from Catalyst Studios. The “Gladiator” and “Wonder Woman” star will play the lead role in the film, directed by auteur Siri Rødnes (“A Gambler’s Guide to Dying”). Sam Hunt (“Chicago PD,” ”Empire”) and Stef Dawson (The Hunger Games trilogy, “The Dust Walker”), will co-star opposite Nielsen. Principal photography will begin in Belgrade, Serbia, on Sept. 25. The film is being produced by Devin DiGonno for Catalyst Studios. Holly Levow, Mark Pennell and Paul Kampf are executive producing.

Manchester United forward Anthony Elanga was named among the substitutes for Sweden's Nations League clash with Serbia on Saturday night - but Erik ten Hag will love his reaction to being dropped.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Otmara Marrero (“Start-Up”) and Katie Clarkson-Hill (“Hanna”) are set to star in Catalyst Studios actioner “Switch & Bait.” Directed by Michelle Saledo, the pic is the first project of Catalyst Studios to begin physical production. Catalyst launched its banner in May with an initial slate of six feature films directed, produced and centered on female protagonists. Principal photography began in Belgrade, Serbia, this past week. Megan Messmer and Veronica Caicedo are producing, while Catalyst Studios’ Holly Levow, Mark Pennell and Paul Kampf are executive producing. Highland Film Group is handling the worldwide sales on the title.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Les Films du Losange has closed a raft of major deals on Kasja Naess’s animated feature “Titina” which is produced by the teams behind the Oscar-nominated film “The Triplets of Belleville” and Oscar-winning short “The Danish Poet.” “Titina” will world premiere at Animation Is Film Festival, which takes place Oct. 21-23, and is produced by GKids, in collaboration with Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Variety. Budgeted at $8.5 million, the Norwegian animated movie was produced by Mikrofilm (“The Danish Poet”) and Vivi Film (“The Triplets of Belleville”). The film tells the real-life story of a fox terrier that accompanied her master on an expedition to the North Pole in an air balloon in the 1920’s. It will be released in Norway by Norsk Film Distribusjon, and in France by Les Films du Losange.

SPOILER ALERT: The following reveals major plot points from the Season 8 premiere of NBC’s Chicago Med.