A few days ago, the actors’ strike ended in Hollywood, and the shooting of the US film Žetva (The Harvest), dealing with organ trade and the suffering of the Serbs in Kosovo & Metohija, started immediately, Kurir has learnt.
After 118 days, the Hollywood actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, has ended the strike that started in July, after a preliminary agreement was reached on 9 November with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), representing Disney, Netflix, and other studios, only a few hours before the deadline given to the actors’ union by the studios. The ratification of the agreement is expected in the coming days, which would mean returning to the full production of films and TV series in Hollywood. What is especially interesting is the fact that a supplemented list of greenlighted projects was released only a few days before the agreement was reached. It contains the programme of interim agreements – a short list of independently produced TV series and films that, after lengthy and detailed checks, actors who are members of the labour union were allowed to work on without this being considered a violation of the terms of the strike. This list contained the film The Harvest, which has been in the making for a while now as a US-Serbian production.
The film script, based on the novel Srpsko Srce Johanovo (Johan’s Serbian Heart) by Veselin Dželetović, was written by the US scriptwriter and director Paul Kampf, who will also direct the film. It is true story of a rich German who has a transplant of the heart from a Serbian “Yellow House” victim, and who after the transplant starts to have dreams of unknown landscapes, people, and a boy’s blue eye, prompting him to go to Kosovo in search of answers.
Three years ago the film received the support of the Serbian Film Centre, when the Centre’s committee members Biljana Srbljanović, Predrag Gaga Antonijević, Igor Bojović, Ivan Karl, and Jugoslav Pantelić awarded RSD 40 million to this project. We have learnt from the sources close to the production team that the shooting of the first scenes started on the night between Sunday and Monday.
The crew has gathered, and the cast is still kept secret. Putting the film The Harvest on the list of “films allowed to work on” was greeted with great enthusiasm on the part of the producers. The finalization of the agreement with the US actors, who make up the majority of the film’s cast, will be easier and more certain. Comprehensive and detailed documentation had to be submitted to the independent US committee in order for the project to be put on said list, which is yet another confirmation of the seriousness of the entire story, which has been in preparation for over three years, in the US and Serbia in parallel.
Filmmaker Slađana Zarić authored a docufiction film The Yellow House based on the report by Dick Marty about organ trade, adopted by The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, but the story of The Harvest will now be seen by the entire world.
Over 1,000 people victims of organ trade
The infamous “Yellow House” is located near the town of Burrel in the north of Albania. It is estimated that as many as app. 1,000 Serbs from Kosovo & Metohija have fallen victim to organ trade.
Kurir.rs/ Ljubomir Radanov
