DKC — CINEMA WITH THE BEST PROGRAM IN EUROPE

Thank you, Europe Cinemas! Thank you for this highly prestigious, esteemed and relevant award that 1,200 cinemas in this network dream of, and it came to us just at the moment when we are celebrating 60 years of continuous work, making us overjoyed and proud and encouraging us to strive for even better. Thank you also for the long-standing support to this cinema, which was among the first from Serbia to join the Europe Cinemas Network. As you know, the Cultural Centre of Belgrade Movie Theatre is part of a public cultural institution, and the support provided by Europe Cinemas truly helps us and enables us to dedicate ourselves to artistic content in the best possible way.
The award is a confirmation of the quality of long-standing work, ideas and visions that Marija Marinčić Majdak paved the way for, followed by Nebojša Popović and all the other editors, bringing a lot of love and knowledge through their inspired concepts: Melina Pota, Bojan Vuletić, Maja Uzelac, Stefan Arsenijević, Ivan Aranđelović, and our longtime editor-in-chief Vesna Danilović. This success is indeed the result of the years-long work of the editors-in chief and film editors at the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, as well as all its employees.
This cinema is pushing boundaries, as we saw in the explanation Menem Riša gave us. One of these boundaries that we have moved is the launch of the Festival of Unfilmed Films, a concept created by Stefan Arsenijević – so Europe Cinemas may have an additional challenge when it comes to categorizing programmes for the future. One that arrives right from the Cultural Centre Movie Theatre!
In the past ten or fifteen years, film production in Serbian cinematography has been growing, and documentary films are gaining more and more space both in the festival and production environments. Therefore, thanks to Ivan Aranđelović, the current film editor at DKC, for recognizing this trend and creating more space for domestic and documentary films at DKC.
As part of the programme celebrating 60 years of the cinema, 12 directors who have left an exceptional mark in Yugoslav and Serbian cinematography got their seats, in that way, too, adding another level of legitimacy to this theatre.
I hope this award is an encouragement not only for us who work here, but also for you who watch films in this cinema, as well as for all those who invest their knowledge in work in culture and art, striving to highlight quality above all else, and not profit. So, what we do here makes sense.
Thanks to the entire team at the Cultural Centre of Belgrade and the Movie Theatre, thanks to you, the audience that come to this cinema, thanks to all our partners with whom we organize festivals and to distributors, because without them we certainly would not have the best programme in Europe. Thanks to the Europe Cinemas Network, thanks to its coordinator Mr Menem Richa.

Zorana Đaković Minniti, Associate Director for Programs
Belgrade, Dvorana Kulturnog centra beograda, 12th December 2023

Photography Tanja Drobnjak