The American studio “101” has released the first official trailer for the Serbian film “Dara from Jasenovac,” which will begin showing in the United States in February of this year.
Serbian cinema is dedicated to the tragic fate of the Serbs of Bosnia and Croatia, who were exterminated in the Ustashe death camp Jasenovac, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The film was shot with state support by director Predrag Antonijevic from a script by Natasha Drakulic. It is based on real historical facts, in particular the history of the genocide against the Serbs that took place in the Kozara mountain range in western Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The script was written based on the memories of the few survivors of the Jaenovac concentration camp. The premiere screening of the film took place on November 25 last year in the Serbian enclave of Gracanica in Kosovo. Subsequently, the film was nominated from Serbia for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
The film tells the story of a ten-year-old Serbian girl, Dara, who ended up in Jasenovac with her mother and two brothers. Soon the girl’s mother and older brother are killed, and the child, who has matured early, spends all her efforts and life trying to save her younger brother.
The Jasenovac extermination camp system was created on the territory of the puppet Independent Croatian Power allied with the Third Reich in May 1941 and existed until April 23, 1945, when this territory was cleared of the Nazis by Yugoslav partisans.
According to various estimates, during all this time about 700 thousand people were killed there: approximately 500 thousand Serbs, 40 thousand Gypsies, 33 thousand Jews, 127 Croatian and Bosniak communists and anti-fascists, 20 thousand children under 12 years of age (there were special barracks where the children were abandoned separately from their parents and died of hunger and dysentery).
At the same time, savage methods of executions and massacres of people kept in them were practiced in the camp, the staff deliberately did not use gas and firearms, practicing edged weapons, sledgehammers and other savage methods of killing, local executioners organized competitions among themselves who could kill the most prisoners, the most “ “effective” in August 1942 was Petar Brzica, who personally slaughtered 1360 people.