Sequel announced to hit Serbian movie ‘Next To Me’ (Pored Mene)

By

Marcus Agar

Acclaimed Serbian director Stevan Filipovic will challenge a society of shifting morals and questionable values with his highly-anticipated movie sequel Next To Us (Pored Nas).

Characters who were locked in school without phones in Stevan’s Serbian feature Next To Me (Pored Mene) will return in a significantly more extreme story that fast-forwards the students into tough and unfamiliar territory.

The cast will include: Slaven Doslo (Lazar), Nikola Glisic (Strahinja), Darko Ivic (Tadija), Milica Majkic (Jelena), Gorica Regodic (Isidora), Jelena Puzic (Sofija), Nikola Dragutinovic (Srba), Matea Milosavljevic (Sandra), Marko Panajotovic (Kosta) and Andjelko Beros (Dobrica).

Seven years after that classroom lock-in, these old friends each step out of their variously colourful (and sometimes shady) lives to take part in a new reality TV show, ‘Natural Selection’.

Stevan Filipovic: “In Next to Me we removed the protagonists from their natural habitat by denying them access to internet and mobile phones. In Next to Us, we take it up a notch: not only is technology unavailable, but they have been displaced from an urban area to be abandoned in the wild. Their actions will reveal whether it is possible, even in extreme circumstances, to go beyond acquired patterns of behaviour and response.”

As with Next to Me, the actors have been closely involved in developing their characters, contributing to the authenticity of their roles. This will continue with workshops and fine-tuning during production, plus two weeks in the wild for the actors to master basic survival skills.

Stevan Filipovic: “We think of actors as partners in both the writing and filmmaking process. Their input is valuable, adding authenticity to our story and dialogue, since this is a story of their generation.”

Filmed in forests around the Serbian mountains of Tara and Kopaonik, Durmitor in Montenegro and the Red Lake in Croatia, Next to Us will be a postcard to the stunning countryside of the former Yugoslavian states.

Next To Us will film in spring 2018, to premiere in early 2019. Co-written by Stevan Filipovic (director) and Milena Bogavac, the film will be produced by Branislav Jevic of Hypnopolis, and distributed in Serbia by Taramount Film.

View the trailer for Next To Us (Pored Nas) below

Next To Me was Serbia’s most watched film of (May-December) 2015, with more than 81,000 cinema attendances. It was seen by more than two million viewers when it premiered on Serbian national broadcaster, RTS, in 2017. The film screened at numerous international festivals and won the Golden Arena Prize at the prestigious Pula Film Festival 2015, as well as almost all major awards at Serbian festivals. The film was an online hit, with the theme song generating more than 3.5million views on YouTube.

Stevan Filipovic wrote and directed three previous award-winning films produced by Hypnopolis: Sheitan’s Warrior (2006), Skinning (2010) and Next to Me (2015). These films addressed problems of growing up in a voice that was well received by teen and youth audiences, achieving international accolades and cinema success in Serbia.

Hypnopolis is at the forefront of the new generation of independent film producers in Serbia. Fronted by producer Branislav Jevic, Hypnopolis develops daring genre-defined films that communicate with loyal cinema audiences. Hypnopolis actively invest in talented young people and support films that deal with significant social and political issues that encourage open discussion, and represent their mission to develop educational and commercial functions in film.

Marcus Agar

Marcus is a Journalist, PR Consultant and Blogger having set up ‘Wild Rooster‘, a cultural blog to report news, reviews and observations about contemporary culture in Serbia and the Western Balkans.