Cinema
Variola Vera
Вариола вера
Goran Marković · 1982
Synopsis
An Albanian pilgrim returns from the Near East carrying an unknown illness. He is passed from one ward to another, he dies, and the contagion spreads to the Belgrade hospital where he stayed. By the time the doctors understand that it is a disease thought to have disappeared, it is too late: the hospital is sealed off, patients and carers shut in together, and everyone, from Dr Grujić to the patient Kenigsmark, reveals himself in the face of fear.
Context
As a student, the director dreamed of adapting Camus's La Peste, whose real subject he took to be the moral debate between the individual and an obscure force; the entry of Soviet tanks into Prague in 1968 confirmed him in this. For lack of financing, he turned to the Yugoslav epidemic of 1972, which he brought to the screen ten years later with Milan Nikolić, in a coproduction between Art Film 80 and Croatia Film, and the shoot was, according to him, the most difficult of his career.
Who it is for
A genre film of one hundred and ten minutes, tense and at times hard to watch. It helps to know that the 1972 epidemic really took place and that Yugoslavia did not like to talk about it.
Prizes and reception
Prize for directing and for screenplay at Valencia in 1982, voted Yugoslav film of the year by the critics, and ranked in 2016 among the hundred Serbian films designated as cultural assets.