
Nobel laureate (2024)
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Branka Šelić as Vera Stojić
Episodes 5
Nobel Prize
On October 26, 1961, news arrived that Andrić had received the Nobel Prize for Literature. While receiving telegrams and congratulations, Andrić recalls the past, returning to the time of the Allied bombing and the struggle for the liberation of Belgrade in 1944, when he lived in Prizrenska Street, with his friend and lawyer Brana Milenković and his sister Kaja. That period was marked by fruitful creativity and his secret love with Milica Babić. In the atmosphere of uncertainty of the first days of the liberation of Belgrade and the beginning of the creation of socialist Yugoslavia, Andrić goes through ethical dilemmas and accusations from the citizens of Belgrade that he betrayed his friends and conscience. Andrić then, when his characteristics are under the scrutiny of the new regime, meets Đilas, Zogović and other writers in partisan uniforms.
Read MoreTelegram
The head of state of Yugoslavia perceives the Nobel Prize as a recognition of the country for its non-bloc and non-aligned policy. Dobrica Ćosić hurries Tito to send Andrić a telegram congratulating him. At the press conference, Andrić answers the journalist's questions about Bosnia and his childhood, recalling his stay in Sarajevo in 1945, going to his mother's grave, the assembly of ZAVNOBIH and meetings with Elije Finci and his school friend Boro Jevtić.
From Sarajevo, he went to Guča Gora monastery, where he spent a period of his youth. Returning to 1961, Andrić receives Tito's telegram and the pressure to respond to it immediately, as well as a strange dream that leads him to the knowledge that he is probably the only person in the world who personally knew both Hitler and Gavrilo Princip.
Read MoreThe ceremony
Preparations for Stockholm are taking a long time. With Vera Stojić, his colleague, secretary and confidant of many decades, Andrić goes through the schedule of obligations in Sweden, through which their complicated relationship is revealed. While the drama The ceremony based on his short story is being broadcast on television, Andrić goes for a walk to Prizrenska to visit Kaja and Brana, whom he has not seen since he moved out of their apartment.
He feels like a hostage to his own past, which in this episode drags him back to 1946, to his entrance speech at SAN and meetings with Milica, then to 1948, the year of the Informburo, which found him in the position of president of the Association of Writers of Yugoslavia, an Association whose many members were expelled for resolutions, and some sent to Goli Otok.
Read MoreSpeech
In Belgrade in 1961, there was a hepatitis epidemic. Andrić, along with Koča Popović, Vuča, and Čolaković, goes over the travel protocol and receives instructions regarding potential questions about dissident Milovan Đilas, whose book Conversations About Stalin is set to be published in New York. Andrić works with Vera Stojić on his speech for the award ceremony.
A postcard arrives from Helena Ižikovska from Poland, which takes him back to the past, to 1914, when as a young student he lived with her family in Krakow. Upon learning about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Andrić leaves Helena and Krakow and travels back to his homeland, first to Zagreb, then to Split, where he meets his friends, fighters against the Austro-Hungarian occupation, and his youthful love, Evgenija Gojmerac. As a member of Young Bosnia, Andrić is arrested by the occupation authorities and taken to a prison in Split.
Read MoreAppeal
In Belgrade, at the "Censorship" Cinema, officials watch Andrić at the awarding of the Nobel Prize. Andrić returns from Stockholm with Milica via Switzerland, the country where he refused to take refuge at the beginning of the war and decided to spend the war with his people. His memory takes him to 1941, when he arrived in occupied Belgrade with Milica and Nenad Jovanović and settled in the apartment of the Milenković family. This is followed by interrogations by the Special Police and pressure to sign the Quisling Appeal to the Serbian people. Andrić refuses to sign the Appeal and tries to distance himself from the occupation authorities. He is faced with everyday horrors: hangings at Terazije, terror of Germans and Nedicians, trains full of Greek Jews. Andrić retires to writing, but the pressure from the police is great, they question him again in connection with his Masonic past.
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