The Paper Prince was first made as a short film in 2005. That year it won Best Local Short and Best Director at the 52nd Belgrade Short and Documentary Film Festival. It also won the prestigious Jovan Acin Award given by the Serbian Culture Ministry in association with the Association of Film Artists and Radio Television Serbia. The same year the film was among the finalists for the Best Balkans Film award of the Short Film Festival in Drama, Greece.
The Paper Prince was shown successfully at twelve international film festivals.

Given the success of the short film with both audiences and critics, the producers decided to expand the film into a feature. Fifteen minutes of the original short film were used along with another 75 minutes of new material.

The feature-length The Paper Prince was completed with assistance from the City of Belgrade Secretariat of Culture and the Serbian Ministry of Culture. It is aimed at entertaining and enlightening both children and their parents.

The Story

JULIJA (8) lives with her parents who love her dearly but pay little real attention to her. One day when she has been left alone at home, Julia opens the door to NIKOLA (28), a suspicious survey-taker. Nikola first tries to rob the apartment but is prevented by Julia and they begin to become friends. Eventually Julia gives Nikola a pair of her mother's earrings and a passport belonging to her father.

Six months later Julia discovers that her family is in danger because of the missing passport and realises that she is responsible for this. With the help of her school friend PEGI (8) and an eccentric old lady, EMA (70), Julia begins to try to find Nikola in order to recover her father's passport. Along the way she discovers a lot more about her parents, society on the shaky ground of transition and the involvement of her parents in unsavoury affairs from which Julia, in the end, manages to extricate them.

The film looks at the process of maturing in both children and adults, and at the importance of the choices made by people big and small between good and evil. This family film is set against a social background in which politics and crime are so tightly entwined that contact with them can't be avoided even by the nicest of middle-class families, such as that to which the heroine belongs.

Festivals

XIII Sarajevo Film Festival, Bosnia, August 2007.
KidsFest, Belgrade, Serbia, October 2007.
Thessaloniki Int. F.F., Thessaloniki, November 2007. (industry screening only)
Mostar Film Festival, Bosnia, November 2007.
New Beijing Int. Film Festival, Beijing, China, December 2007.
Dakha Int. Film Festival, Bangladesh, January 2008.
FEST, Belgrade, Serbia, February 2008.
Montreal International Children's Film Festival, Mart 2008.
Sehpferdchen - Kinderfilmfest Hannover & Braunschweig, April 2008.
International Childrens F.F., Kristiansand, Norway, 2008, April 2008.
Roma Independent Film Festival, Italy, April 2008
The Munich International Film Festival, June 2008.
10th Seoul International Youth Film Festival, Korea (South), July 2008
24th Warsaw Film Festival, Poland, October 2008

The children's novel "The Paper Prince" was published in February, 2008 (Vladislava Vojnović, Narodna knjiga, Belgrade). As is usual, the novel does not follow the film exactly. For example, the film does not reveal all the thoughts of its hero, Julia, while in the novel they are all there in black and white: sometimes she is worried, sometimes angry, sometimes downright insolent, and almost always very funny. But whatever her mood, her thoughts are never boring.
So, if you like to read, give it a try – it doesn't cost much!