"Besmrtna mladost" is a story of urban youth resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Belgrade. Director Vojislav Nanovic was one of the key resistance members during the war so his debut is a pretty faithful account of operations that underwent in Serbian capital. Nanovic's film aged pretty well and if you bear in mind that it was made in 1948, only three years after the war when both the state and film industry were at the very beginning of rebuilding this feature is quite a feat. Nanovic's film is the first one to feature stories of urban guerrillas in Belgrade. Later on, these stories became very popular in a famous TV show "Otpisani" which swapped historical accuracy for intense comic book style action. "Otpisani" was a very successful franchise and it spawned two feature films. This is why Nanovic's work is less known but on the other hand today it stands as some kind of reminder how stuff that was exploited later on in "Otpisani" really looked like. In cinematic terms, one of the most important elements of Nanovic's film is the very setting. The film was shot only three years after the war so a lot of buildings still bore damages caused by both Nazi and Allied bombings. None of the following WW2 maintained such authentic setting. "Besmrtna mladost" for all the fans of Yugoslav partisan films and all the researchers on the subject.
