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Before anyone had even seen Heroes of Halyard, it was already engulfed in scandal.

At an industry presentation at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink forum in August, Telekom Srbija, which produced Heroes of Halyard together with Contrast Studios, screened clips of the World War II epic. The film, from Serbian actor and director Radoš Bajić, was still in postproduction and the clips were only meant to give the audience a sense of the scope of the production, one of the biggest and most ambitious films ever made in the region.

Instead, they sparked a political backlash. Some accused the film, which tells the story of the historic rescue of American airmen by Serbian fighters in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia in 1944, of glorifying Serbian nationalist groups. Benjamina Karić, the mayor of Sarajevo, called the film “revisionist” and demanded festival organizers distance themselves from the producers and the screening, which they promptly did.

The Sarajevo Film Festival has distanced itself from a controversial Serbian film that has been accused of glorifying Serbian nationalist groups after excerpts from the feature were screened at the festival’s industry forum.

Heroes of Halyard, written and directed by Serbian filmmaker Radoš Bajić, is set in a remote Serbian village at the tail end of World War II and tells the story of three brothers and their family torn between conflicting ideologies: Mirko fights in the units of the right-wing Yugoslav Army, Sreten has joined the progressive partisans, while Ilija, the youngest son, is torn between two sides.

The film was not screened as part of the festival. Clips from the pic, currently in post-production, were presented as part of a presentation at Sarajevo’s CineLink industry forum by its producer Telekom Srbija, Serbia’s state-backed telecom company. News of the presentation immediately sparked criticism on the ground in Sarajevo,...

The Sarajevo Film Festival says a Serbian company “breached its trust” by showing footage of a controversial film that critics claim glorifies Serbian nationalist groups.

The film, Heroes of Halyard, from Serbian director and actor Rados Bajic, was not screened as part of the festival. Producers Telekom Srbija showed three excerpts of the movie, which is currently in postproduction, to a small group of attendees on Tuesday as part of a presentation of its upcoming titles at the festival’s industry forum, CineLink.

Heroes of Halyard is set in a small Serbian village in the final days of World War II and tells the story of a family with two brothers on opposite sides: one fighting on behalf of left-wing partisans, the other backing the right-wing Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, the Chetniks, who were aligned with Nazi Germany and responsible for massacres and other war crimes.

The clips triggered...

A World War II drama that critics say glorifies Serbian nationalist groups has sparked outrage at the Sarajevo Film Festival, with organizers under fire for allowing excerpts of the forthcoming film to screen and the mayor of Sarajevo demanding resignations in the ensuing dust-up.

On Wednesday, the Sarajevo fest fought back, insisting that it was caught off-guard by the film’s inclusion at an industry event on Tuesday.

“Heroes of Halyard,” from Serbian actor and director Rados Bajic, is set in a remote Serbian village in the spring of 1944 and tells the story of a family torn apart by competing ideologies when two brothers take up opposing sides in the dying days of World War II: one fighting on behalf of the right-wing Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, the other on behalf of the left-wing Partisans. It centers on the true story of a rescue operation to save American and...