Goran Marković’s film Special Education was the first Yugoslav film to address the issue of juvenile delinquency. It premiered in 1977 at the Yugoslav Film Festival in Pula, where it received several unofficial awards, while Ljubiša Samardžić won the Golden Arena for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the policeman Cane. That same year, the film won the Golden Ducat at the Mannheim Film Festival, which at the time was considered the world’s leading international festival for debut films.
For a time, Special Education was Marković’s most popular and commercially successful film, and it was screened in more than 50 countries. It is considered the debut that paved the way for his highly successful career as a feature-film director. The film also marked the debuts of several actors who would later become very prominent, including Branislav Lečić and Olivera Ježina. Through his role as Fikret Hadžiabdić, Branislav Lečić established himself as an actor particularly well suited to portraying characters on the wrong side of the law. In preparing for the role, the young acting student consulted psychologists and criminologists.
The film follows the story of a boy named Pero Mitić, nicknamed Trta, who ends up in a correctional institution after a series of petty thefts and his mother’s arrest. He is played by Slavko Štimac, then still a high-school student. Bekim Fehmiu appears as Žarko Munižaba, a young educator eager to introduce new methods of rehabilitation at the institution.
One of the film’s iconic characters is Ljupče, a particularly demanding role for Aleksandar Berček, who played a “silent type” who refused to speak. His body movements and facial expressions were therefore the only clues to what he was thinking at any given moment.
Goran Marković once explained that he wanted to strike a balance in the film between harsh reality and childhood innocence. Many agree that he succeeded. Although essentially a difficult social drama, the film also contains moments of comedy that soften its otherwise bleak atmosphere.
