You’d be surprised to learn that the first same-sex kiss in cinema history took place in 1911, in pioneering Serbian filmmaker Čiča Ilija Stanojević’s The Life and Deeds of the Immortal Leader Karađorđe, where two soldiers kiss twice on the mouth. This was a traditional greeting at the time, which in itself should be enough to blow the minds of Serbian ultra-nationalists who are, more than a century later, sending death threats to actors who take on gay roles.

We learn this historical information from the opening titles of Dragan Jovićević’s docu-fiction hybrid Warm Film, which has just world-premiered in the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s Citizen Queer section. Even the news that this film received funding from Film Center Serbia was picked up by the tabloids that tend to seize every opportunity for outrage-mongering. One of the victims of this practice is actor Miloš Timotijević, whose tough-guy character in the crime series South Wind turns out to be gay, and who is one of the many film professionals interviewed in the feature.

Jovićević launches a casting for a “fake film” – one he’s never going to make. Instead, he will include scenes with actors in his documentary on queer elements in Yugoslav and Serbian cinema. Two young, straight thesps are selected – Djordje Mišina and Djordje Galić. They lead us through talks with experts and legends of Serbian cinema, such as queer icon Milan Jelić (who died last year), an actor-director who played, for that era, ambiguous roles in 1960s classics such as Živojin Pavlović’s The Rats Woke Up and When I Am Dead and Gone. The former encountered censorship from the communist government, but not because of the queer elements – instead, they attacked the negative representation of the poor working class.

There were queer elements even in Yugoslav films from the 1940s, but as film historian Nebojsa Jovanović explains, it is something that we can read into them from today’s perspective, and was probably more the result of the filmmaker’s lack of tonal control. In the subversive 1960s and 1970s, in films such as Lazar Stojanović’s banned Plastic Jesus, “faggots” were featured as a form of protest against the establishment, rather than real characters. Later, in the 1980s, gay or trans protagonists were played for laughs in numerous popular comedies, which can’t be considered as emancipation – but they were played by big stars whose popularity only increased as a result.

It was only in the 1990s, with Želimir Žilnik and his film Marble Ass, that a real breakthrough came, as he cast real-life trans prostitutes in a fictional story – which he speaks about in his typical, engaging style. Many viewers will be acquainted with later works such as Mladen Djordjević’s 2000s movies Made in Serbia and The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, while Srdjan Dragojević’s The Parade [+lee también:
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In between the segments in which the two actors listen to experts (and are visibly bored by the erudite, but quite accurate, musings of A Serbian Film writer Aleksandar Radivojević), they prepare for their “gay roles”. A scene in the sauna where they awkwardly – and adorably – try to get physical is one of the film’s highlights, along with a clumsy dance they perform, copying a scene from When I Am Dead and Gone, with Jelić directing them.

Jovićević takes the history path in order to lead the viewer up to today’s situation and show the absurdity of the social awareness of the newly puritanical era, which in Serbia takes on a very violent dimension. The Western world that has ostensibly accepted homosexuality is experiencing its own backlash as well, which makes Warm Film both topical and universal.

Warm Film is a co-production by Serbia’s Pogon, Greifer and Merlinka.