Loving Glances (Sjaj u Ocima) has picked up Best Screenplay award for writer/director Srdjan Karanovic and Best Music prize for veteran composer Zoran Simjanovic this weekend at the Monte Carlo International Film Festival.

A co-production between F&ME and Belgrade based YODI Movie Craftsmen, the film is the last production ever to receive funding from the now defunct European Co-Production Fund run by British Screen. Other major funders were YODI, the Ministry of Culture of Serbia and Montenegro and the Karic Foundation. The first in a series of co-productions between the two companies, YODI were responsible for runaway hit Munje (Thunderbirds) two years ago.

Written and directed by Srdjan Karanovic, Loving Glances is a bittersweet romantic comedy set in mid 90s Belgrade. Eight years in the making, the film tells the story of Labud, a young student set adrift on the tide of refugees created by the ethnic strife in the region, and Romana a beautiful girl from the wrong side of the ethnic divide who meet and fall in love as displaced people in Belgrade of the mid nineties. As they fall in love so the “ghosts” of their past visit them and try to keep them apart.

Sold internationally by BVIP, the Loving Glances has turned in over 40,000 admissions to date in Serbia and Montenegro as well as having concluded sales to Italy, Scandinavia as well as US distribution.
“Awards from smaller festivals are also useful for international sales,” says BVIP President Bjorg Veland, “Loving Glances is a charming, intelligent and ironic new look at an old genre – the romantic comedy. It’s courage is that it chooses to set itself in a very difficult time and a place in history – war torn Belgrade. This is the first film dealing with the war in this region which has no brutal murders and no atrocities, and though it is a strong romantic comedy it never trivilaises the plight of the refugees whose stories it is. Such a film is already reaching out to audiences all over the world.”

Monte Carlo is the latest in a long list of festival screenings after it’s debut in Competition in Venice this year, and sell out screenings in Toronto. From there the film has been seen in Rio de Janeiro, Montpellier, Athens, Chicago, Rome, Ljubljana, and Vlissingen with bookings already in place for Istanbul and Sofia and Tallinn early in 2004.