When actress Branka Katic left Serbia in 1999, she already had numerous popular series and films behind her, and life and historical circumstances forced her to make this important decision.
Twenty-two years later, as she says, she found out and realized that she was a refugee then, like those from the Middle East, whose problems and difficulties receive attention today.
"My departure from Serbia was for seven days to a Czech village where I filmed a drama for the BBC Warriors director Peter Kozminski," says the actress.
"From there I could see the planes that were going to bomb Serbia."
As the bombing of the former Yugoslavia began and she could not return to the country, she went to London.
"I only learned this year from lawyer Nikola Kovačević, who works with refugees, that I was actually a refugee in London at the time," she says.
The occasion for the military intervention of the NATO alliance was the persecution of Albanians in Kosovo by the Serbian security forces.
The most valuable thing that she took with her were the childhood photos that she gave to the film production.
"I was afraid it was the only thing I would have left," says the actress.
The subjects of today's refugees are also the subject of a short film by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in which Branka Katic participates.
The film is titled What did they take with them?, and it was inspired by the stories and testimonies of refugees who were forced to leave their homes due to conflict and persecution.
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Today, even 25 years after she filmed the cult film Premeditated Murder, a love story between a girl from Belgrade and a young man, a refugee from Croatia, Branka Katić says that she "doesn't want to teach" people how to treat refugees.
"I only invite them to become aware of something that is human and recognize the suffering of the soul," she says.
Baby diapers, just one
Keys to a house that has been demolished, a yellow plastic bag for documents that can go into the water, just a cup.
These are the items that the actors in the film What did they take with them? they pronounce.
These are actually the things that the refugees managed to take with them, and which were recorded in the poem by the writer Jennifer Toskvig.
The poem was used for a short film, first shot in German and Polish, and in November 2021 it premiered in Serbian.
Branka Katić was part of the cast, which read the poem.
"The most emotional item I read was seemingly ordinary - diapers for a baby, just one," Katic remembers.
"Imagine that you have a baby, that you are in the red on the border between Poland and Belarus, and that you have no diapers."
Whatever people took with them, she adds, "you realize by reading the items that a lot of that stuff will never reach its destination."
"They lost or pawned many things, if they had jewelry they gave it to smugglers to pay for crossing the border," says the actress.
"I realized then that whatever you bring will have sentimental value, but it will be used up.
"What you carry with you at that moment are - incredible courage in your heart and faith that your pain will be recognized".
The actress says that the film carries a strong emotional message.
"What kind of people are we if so much pain and adversity leaves us indifferent?", she asks.
This year, she became UNHCR's representative for refugee rights.
That's why she came up with the idea to do a theater play with the refugees who were in Serbia at that moment, which was prepared for three months.
"My work has this magic of moving people to another place," she says.
"Many women who played in the play left Serbia and live somewhere far away, but they still write to me".
Watch the video: Boxers from Afghanistan stayed in Serbia - they are afraid of returning because of the Taliban
The migrant crisis and the Balkan route
In 2015, the internal unrest in Libya in Africa, the civil war in Syria, but also the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan forced millions of people to seek a better life and asylum in the countries of Western Europe across the Mediterranean and the Balkans.
Thus, Europe witnessed the largest migration since the Second World War. Thousands have died trying to get from Africa to the shores of Europe and, while some countries have welcomed them with open arms, others have erected fences and closed their borders.
Hungary then raised wire fence along the border with Serbia and Croatia and built a wall to prevent the passage of refugees,
More than a million people passed through Serbia from 2015 to 2019, most of them yearning to reach one of the countries of the European Union.
The passage of refugees from Serbia to Croatia was caused by the so-called trade war between two countries.
Croatia then banned the entry of trucks from Serbia.
Watch the video: Refugees from the Middle East on the border between Poland and Belarus
'Sirens are heard, and mom asks - are you eating fruit?'
Branka Katic only had one suitcase for seven days when she escaped from Serbia, without even knowing that she would be forced to do so.
In the Czech Republic, she shot a film about British soldiers in the war in Bosnia, when the bombing of Yugoslavia began in 1999.
"I called my family and friends in a panic when I saw the planes," the actress remembers.
"Friends already knew because of the Internet that there would be a bombing, but my father kept saying until the end that it was impossible for this to happen on the threshold of the 21st century."
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Since she could not return to Belgrade, the production took her to London.
The first impression from there was that she was penniless, because she could not open a bank account to receive the fee.
"I didn't have a confirmation from a bank in Serbia that I was a good saver, because all the banks in Belgrade were closed due to the bombing," she says.
"I remember calling my mom from the payphone and I spent a lot of change in those days."
With the sounds of air traffic sirens that she heard in the background, the actress says that she still remembers her mom asking her at that moment - 'are you eating fruit?'
"It was hard for me, but certainly not as hard as the people who survived the bombing," she says.
As she cried at night and filmed during the day with the famous director Peter Kozminski, he told her at one point that they could use her mood for a sad scene.
"I told him: 'I'd rather be bad in your movie than feel what I'm feeling now,'" she adds.
Why NATO bombed Yugoslavia
Premeditated murder and 'domestic refugees'
The column of people who have left their homes, seen in recent years on the Balkan refugee route from Asia and Africa to Western Europe, is not unknown in Serbia.
More than 600.000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia came to Serbia after the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
It was the largest wave of refugees in the region, according to UNHCR data.
It was in 1996 that the film was released Premeditated murder, based on the novel by Slobodan Selenić.
Branka Katić and Nebojša Glogovac play the main roles in the film, and perhaps the first big ones.
Branka Katić plays Bulika, a woman from Belgrade, who meets a young wounded man from Croatia, Bogdan Bilogorac (the late Nebojša Glogovac), in the 1992 war.
Belgrade in the film is full of refugees fleeing the war, and people in Serbia accept them differently.
"It's a film about an age and an unhappy love," says the actress and points out that she was "incredibly lucky to have a wonderful partner next to her for whom it was her first major role."
She says that she is glad that they "managed to present people with that emotion", the feelings of refugees and that they "try to understand where they come from and what duties they feel".
"I just hope that the fate of today's refugees will not be the same as the characters in the film," she adds.
The film, he says, talked about people who "came from the area of our former homeland, spoke the same language as us, shared cultural heritage and history, and as such were closer to us than refugees from Asia and Africa".
"If we're making a comparison, we need to understand - being a refugee is difficult anytime and anywhere," she says.
"We share with them the same need to be accepted somewhere, to live safely and in peace, for our children to go to school".
Katic claims that "although we do not know much about the cultures" of the peoples who passed through the Balkan route, "we should know that these people are perhaps closer to us than the northern cultures" of Western European countries.
"These people like to be good hosts, they like good food, good music, there is a certain warmth that we share with them," she says.
I understand that it is human nature to feel fear towards something that is unknown, but it is important to open up, he adds.
Two-dimensional roles and the return
Branka Katic has been living in London since her fateful departure in 1999, and she also started a family there.
However, today he is sitting in a cinema hall Yugoslav movie theaters, where the premiere of the film was held What did they take with them?
A year and a half ago, she returned to the Serbian theater and film scene.
She says that she felt "the most sincere excitement" when she realized how enthusiastically the people in Serbia welcomed her.
"I felt both responsibility and joy," she says.
"I've been acting since I was 14 and I'm glad that my characters communicate with the audience, I'm glad that the audience in Serbia loves me after all these years that I didn't spend here".
She is glad that here she "plays roles that are more demanding and closer to her".
She is especially proud of her small role in the film Among the gods Vuk Ršumović.
It is the true story of a young refugee girl, who is on her way to Europe, was looking for her brother in Belgrade and found out that he had drowned.
"It's a modern Antigone, that girl now lives in Germany, and for her sake I was happy to play a small role," says the actress.
Filming began in November 2021, and the film should be released in two years.
Katic's return to the theater is also very important, and this year she officially became a member of the Belgrade Drama Theater.
Play in plays Silently flows the Mississippi, in another story that permeates the theme of refugees, as well as in Twilight of the Gods.
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Shank and the Balkans
The audience from the Balkans was particularly pleased with the role of the actress in the Croatian series Newspapers.
"I returned to London for the second time in 2013 and played a bit of a two-dimensional role, in order to stay in training," says the actress.
"Then, in 2016, I was invited from Croatia for the role of a journalist - a real, brave and somewhat destructive woman who enforces justice, but privately lives something else".
Series Newspaper she is especially fond of her because she "restored her faith that she still has love and the gift to do her job".
She says that it was the first time she filmed in Croatia and that she was curious how everything would look like.
"I had the best time in the world," she says.
In the series, the characters, after working in the newsroom, usually end the day with endless drinks at the bar of a nearby bar.
Katic says that the crew of the series often "after filming at the bar, continued sipping wine until one o'clock at night".
This is the first Croatian series that can be watched on Netflix.
'Passport and that little bit of soul'
More than two decades since Branka Katic first moved to London, she says she is happy that the world has become smaller now and that it is not so difficult to leave and return.
However, he adds that he feels that most refugees probably "hope to return home".
"I believe that all of them would rush back if they could," says Katic.
"I'm like that too, I've been outside for 20 years, and I don't feel at home anywhere."
While he leaves for his family and returns again, today he knows what he always carries with him:
"Passport and that little bit of soul".
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