All of this was to tell a complex story, one part of which takes the form of a police procedural, prior to smallpox being identified in the story, where protagonists try to uncover what’s happening. The other part is where the protagonists enter the fight against the epidemic, which is more akin to a medical thriller. The material was reinterpreted and adapted so that it fits into this particular film format.

The film is narrated by Zoran Radovanović, who was a young doctor in 1972 and tasked with helping suppress the outbreak. A few years before Covid he published a book about the outbreak. What role did he have in the creation of the film?

Professor Radovanović’s book served as the main source of information for the film. Since he was one of the protagonists in the events of 1972, it was only natural that he would narrate the film. We spent a week in the studio just talking and we built the story of the film through his memories and his intimate reminiscences. The archival material itself was treated with the intent of bringing to mind memories, for it to fit in the rhythm of the doctor’s thoughts. By that I mean the slowing down of the footage which accentuates the menacing ambient sound and which reflects the threat posed by the fast-spreading disease.

Professor Radovanović was very present in the media during the Covid pandemic, he was very critical towards the Serbian government’s decisions. It was really exciting to listen to him as one of our most experienced epidemiologists — one people turn to in order to hear the truth — talk about the smallpox outbreak that happened 50 years earlier, at the beginning of his career. If it weren’t for him, the film wouldn’t have been made.

There are a number of graphic scenes in the film, including footage of people suffering horribly from smallpox with terrible sores all over their body. How did you decide to use this footage?

Ethical dilemmas are always going to be there and these are tough to solve. However, it’s only through explicit scenes and the emotional interplay between narration and the image that a film like this can provide insight into the frightening nature of smallpox. Only in this way does the significance of the 1972 Yugoslav epidemic containment and disease eradication become obvious and indisputable.

When the Covid pandemic began, the Serbian media made frequent mention of the 1972 smallpox outbreak. There was hardly a word about it in the Kosovar media though. Despite the fact that the outbreak started in Kosovo and Kosovo was where the majority of the cases and deaths were, it has almost no role in the public imagination of the country and the younger generation doesn’t know about it. Why do you think that is?

Is the smallpox outbreak the only subject that’s avoided or is it that people rarely discuss Yugoslavia in general? It is hard for me to make assumptions about why these events, which hit Kosovo hardest, would not be spoken about. The smallpox epidemic was identified by Kosovar doctors, while Kosovar healthcare workers bore the brunt of the fight against this terrible disease.

Why do people in Serbia keep discussing this matter even outside the context of the most recent pandemic? Well, one of the probable causes might be Goran Marković’s “Variola Vera,” one of the most significant and best-known films of ours that you can’t forget so easily; this is a work that preserves our collective memory of the event.

Mladen Kovačević: Even doctors forgot what it looked like

Serbian director talks about his recent film on the 1972 smallpox outbreak in Kosovo.

Daniel Petrick

Mladen Kovačević: Even doctors forgot what it looked like

Serbian director talks about his recent film on the 1972 smallpox outbreak in Kosovo.

Daniel Petrick