After last year's first National Film Festival of Serbia which was held in Novi Sad, organized by Film Center Serbia under the concept of Cinema City, in co-operation with lauded music festival Exit, a complete confusion started when Film Center Serbia left the concept of Cinema City to Exit and decided to organize its own National Film Festival in Sopot, 30 kilometers south of Belgrade.

Cinema City - The International Festival of Film and New Media, organized by Exit will be held in Novi Sad from June 14-21. Its international competition will include Berlinale competition entries such as Majid Majidi's The Song Of Sparrows, Lance Hammer's Ballast and FIPRESCI winner Shahida: The Brides Of Allah by Israeli Natalie Assouline and Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In.

Side programmes will include New Latin American Films; Planet Rock with 24 Hour Party People, Joy Division, Filth And Wisdom, Lou Reed's Berlin to Patti Smith: Dream Of Life; The Best of Horror featuring Death Proof and Planet Terror; Animatrix programme including A Scanner Darkly, Appleseed, Persepolis, Renaissand.

Novi Sad and Sopot will overlap in the national competition. The Sopot National Film Festival of Serbia will take place from Jul 1-5, and will have the competition of:

Love And Other Crimes by Stefan Arsenijevic
Obituary For Escobar by Milorad Milinkovic
Pale Moon by Ljubisa Samardzic
Bureau For Lost Things by Svetislav Prelic
The Fourth Man by Dejan Zecevic
On The Beautiful Blue Danube by Darko Bajic
Who The Fuck Is Milos Brankovic by Nebojsa Radivojevic
The Paper Prince by Marko Kostic

Novi Sad will have the same competition, except that it will not include Pale Moon and will present the greatest local hit of the year, Uros Stojanovic's Charleston And Vendetta.

This kind of confusion is not unusual for Serbian cinema. The question is, which festival'swinner will 'count' as the official national selection' On paper, it would be Sopot, but Novi Sad will have a bigger audience and it's taking place half a month earlier.

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