The success of the Russian "Balkan Frontier" prompted Serbian filmmakers to make patriotic films
In Serbia, for the first time since the civil war of the 90s, filming began on a film called “Koshare”, which tells about the feat of Serbian border guards and military personnel who repelled a joint attack by NATO, Albania and the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999.
The Cinema Center of Serbia reported this on its website, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The authors of the epic film project “Koshare” were director Balša Djogo and screenwriter Djordje Milosavljevic. One of the actors involved in the film was Milos Bikovich, popular both in Serbia and Russia. By the way, at one time Bikovich said that it was after the success of the film “Balkan Frontier” in Serbia, which played out a real historical episode with the occupation of the Slatina airfield in Kosovo by Russian paratroopers, that Serbian filmmakers had the idea to make a film dedicated to the heroism of Serbian soldiers in the war of the 90s .
Over the course of a quarter of a century, similar films were shot by directors from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, who altered the bloody history in their own way. In Serbia, all this time, they were either reflecting on the fact that the heroes of that war were victims of historical circumstances and politicians (“Beautiful villages burn beautifully,” “The Knife”), or ideologically serving the Western theory that the Serbs in that war they are to blame for everyone and everyone (“Tour”, “Circles”). And only now, on the wave of the success of “The Balkan Frontier”, Serbian cinema began filming the patriotic film “Koshare”.
The historical episode that formed the basis of the future film is called the “Battle of Koshar” or “Hell of Koshar.” In April 1999, NATO leadership, in support of its air operation, planned and carried out a large-scale attack from Albania on the Koshare border post in Metohija. In addition to the militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the attack involved regular forces of the Albanian army, as well as instructors and sabotage groups of NATO and Western PMCs.
The North Atlantic Alliance was also responsible for arming and supplying the attackers and supporting their efforts from the air.
The Yugoslav border guards were the first to fight the aggressor, and later army units joined them. The fighting on Koshar continued from April to May, but the Yugoslav units, despite the strongest onslaught, did not allow the enemy to enter the country. But they were forced to leave their positions after the Kumanovo agreement, as a result of which Slobodan Milosevic was forced to withdraw the army and police from Kosovo.
Yugoslav fighters who repelled the attack on Koshara
The feat of the Yugoslav soldiers is comparable to the feat of the Pskov paratroopers at Height 776 during the Second Chechen War. In total, 109 Yugoslav fighters were killed in the battles of Koshare.
Mural in memory of those killed at Koshar
It should be noted that the situation with Serbian cinema is in many ways similar to Russian, which, against the backdrop of numerous Ukrainian films about the war with the “Russian occupiers,” diligently avoids the topic of the war in Donbass, limiting itself to rare non-grossing works by individual authors.
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