Serbian director Danilo Bećković, whose films Little Buddho and The Samurai in Autumn [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film] both opened in the top spot of the local box-office chart in 2014 and 2016, respectively, has scored another hit, in collaboration with a co-director, the documentary filmmaker Andrijana Stojković (The Box, Wongar), and his regular screenwriter Dimitrije Vojnov. 3211 [+leggi anche:
recensione
scheda film], a hybrid music documentary about the trap musician Stefan Djurić Rasta, one of the most popular performers in the region of the former Yugoslavia, has sold 15,409 admissions in its opening weekend through distributor Taramount Film, grossing €70,000 at the box office, and beating the competition consisting of The Expendables 4, The Nun 2 and A Haunting in Venice.

At the time of writing, a week into its release, the film now stands at 22,456 admissions and gross box-office takings of €98,000 in Serbia and Montenegro, and is getting its Bosnian release today, 28 September.

The 70-minute film, described as a "visual album" and an "aestheticised documentary", is a mix of dramatised events from the musician's life – in which he plays himself, largely focusing on his stint in prison – documentary segments and sequences built around his seven new songs written at the time. The title, 3211, refers to the number of his prison cell, where he encounters a different world, not inhabited by his circle of friends or family, but certainly by fans of his music.

"Some of the most important television events in recent years have been true-crime documentaries," says Vojnov. "There is this huge super-documentary scene that spawned major directors, and in Belgrade, we have two comprehensive festivals – gradually, even mainstream audiences are opening up to watching documentaries, so I am really not that surprised that something that is not a typical narrative feature is working at the box office. Danilo is a very special filmmaker, and when you watch this picture, all of these techniques we use work together seamlessly.

"Rasta is ten years younger than us, and we were working with people who actually film a lot, even though they are not filmmakers, because since they were 15 years old, they have had cameras on their mobile phones. Their music is almost always accompanied by videos, and a lot of those they make themselves with many people who are not even from film schools. Their audience is even younger and even more media-literate, and I guess that maybe typical narrative films are a bit of a museum artefact for most of them. So this success is actually very organic," the writer explains.

3211 is a production by Belgrade-based Balkaton.