Igor Šeregi's second feature, a mix of broad comedy and romcom, attracted nearly 220,000 viewers during its extended opening weekend

The Wedding by Igor Šeregi

Since its premiere in Zagreb on 20 January and up until Sunday 25 January, Igor Šeregi's second feature, The Wedding, attracted 170,496 viewers in Croatia and 49,067 in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina. This means that the film has already broken the national box-office record in the category of 21st-century domestic films, previously held by Vinko Brešan’s The Priest’s Children [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vinko Bresan
film profile] (2013) with a total of 158,131 viewers, and in the category of the best opening weekend in Croatian theatres regardless of the country of production of the film. The box-office figure for Croatia is close to €1.3 million, while for Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is around €385,000. That kind of success was bound to happen, since the pre-sale figure stood at more than 70,000 tickets sold before the first screening of the film. The Wedding enters distribution in the neighbouring and co-production country of Serbia this weekend and in Slovenia next weekend.

“I am very proud of the entire team in front of and behind the camera, and I am delighted with the audience's reactions. This is a reward for all of our hard work together, and I hope that these numbers will encourage new domestic comedies and commercial films,” said screenwriter and director Igor Šeregi. Producer Ivan Kelava added, “Despite all our efforts, the scale of the enthusiasm for the film was hard to expect. Thank you to all our partners for your support, and most of all, thank you to the audience. I hope that we have lifted the spirits of the viewers with the film, even if only for 97 minutes.”

Genre-wise, The Wedding is a mix of a mainstream comedy, which milks the humour from the stereotypes of dislike and distrust between the Serbs and the Croats, and romantic comedy, which overcomes the same prejudices. London-based couple Ana (Nika Grbelja) and Nebojša (Marko Grabež) are expecting a baby. The trouble is that they have kept their relationship secret from their families, since they are both children of high-profile fathers; Ana of the Croatian tycoon Miljenko (Rene Bitorajac), and Nebojša of the Serbian government minister Vuk (Dragan Bjelogrlić). Both fathers need each other for their business and political plans, and the planned wedding turns into a proverbial battlefield of negotiations and deception.

In addition to the actors mentioned, the rest of the cast includes the best of Serbian and Croatian thesps, particularly in the field of comedy: Vesna Trivalić, Linda Begonja, Snjažana Sinovčić Šiškov, Jelisaveta “Seka” Sabljić, Roko Sikavica, Anđelka Stević Žugić, Srđan Todorović, Dejan Aćimović, Denis Murić and others. The script was written by Šeregi in collaboration with Marko Backović and co-producer Marko Jocić. Tomislav Sutlar was the cinematographer, and Lea Mileta was the editor.

The Wedding is a Croatian-Serbian co-production staged by Eclectica and Viktorija Film. It was financially supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Creative Europe – MEDIA and Croatian Radio-Television. Duplicato Media handles the distribution in Croatia, while Blitz Film and Video will oversee it in the rest of the region.