Krsto Papić

Who was Krsto Papić?

Krsto Papić was a Croatian screenwriter and film director whose career spanned several decades.

Papić was born in Vučji Do, near Nikšić in today's Montenegro. His early feature films and documentaries were part of Croatian and Yugoslav New Cinema, and often regarded as Croatian echo of the Black Wave artistic movement that mostly took place within Serbia. Additionally, Papić himself was connected to the Croatian Spring political movement during the early 1970s. He was the member of the Zagreb filmophile circle influenced by the French New Wave, so-called "Hitchcockians", along with film-makers and critics Ante Peterlić, Zoran Tadić, Branko Ivanda, Petar Krelja and centered around film critics Vladimir Vuković and Hrvoje Lisinski. Papić's two best-known early feature films, Lisice and Predstava Hamleta u Mrduši Donjoj, were often attacked from the government sources. Lisice did not get permission to represent Yugoslavia in the Cannes Film Festival, so it entered Quinzaine program in 1970. Izbavitelj was heavily criticised by Stipe Šuvar, who alluded that film's allegory about Fascism actually also refers to the Communism.

Papić's subsequent feature films were more classical in its narration, but again politically controversial in the last decade of Yugoslavia. Particularly My Uncle's Legacy, critical picture of Yugoslavia's political situation under titoism during Informbiro period, which won nomination for Golden Globe in 1989, has been surrounded by controversy and political attacks from traditional Party circles and especially Partisan Veterans' organisations, so the production was delayed for couple of years, but achieved due to support of intellectuals, newspapers and Party fractions in the time of disolvement and fight among Party fractions in last years of the Yugoslav federation.