Down the Horizon

Serbian cinematography

The portrait of one very smart, intelligent young woman that found herself in the middle of II World War has never been depicted as well as now in new Serbian cinematography. As feminism strongly arises through all the struggles, so do the movie genres evolve and spread in more varieties. Women are getting in the center of the idea, captivating the public not just through aesthetics and looks. Though looks and women’s outer beauty still play the main part and generally women are still very much so primitively objectivized, there is a new sharp and focused tendency in changing this pattern.

Vera is a movie (and TV series) based on a real story about young Vera Pešić, Serbian “Mata Hari”, a quadruple spy who was forced to work for the german, english and serbian sides. She was just a girl in her 20s coming from Leskovac when she entered the dark, aggressive, hypocritical world of men and their politics.

She was a strong, self-confident girl, with her head held high searching for a better life in difficult times, but ended up in the labyrinth of espionage.

In order to save herself and the people she cared about and also not to be remembered as a traitor, she somehow navigated between all sides (Serbia itself had many traitors and its people were shattered on many levels and groups in war). She worked with communists, chetniks, germans and saved many people that Nazis put on their list for execution. Some of the letters she exchanged with some members of the partisan detachment are kept in the Historical Archive.

Vera didn’t trust anyone and had no ideology. She was guided by the facts and worked with information. Whoever was interested in any, she would deal with interested parties in accordance with the circumstances. She was on her side since no one really knew which side is right. That is politics. Ruthless and unpredictable in which only ordinary people suffer.

Vera Pešić was captured and shot by the Chetniks at dawn on May 18, 1944 together with her only parent, her mother Andja.

She knew what awaited her.