Sightlines · reception

How Barking at the Stars was received

1998 · Zdravko Šotra · Barking at the Stars on Sightlines

The arc

An instant crowd-pleaser in 1998 Serbia — embraced precisely because it offered warm, apolitical 1960s nostalgia in the middle of a grim decade — it has since settled in as a perennial TV-rerun classic that ex-Yugoslav audiences rewatch ritually.

What’s debated

The gentle running debate is whether its rose-tinted, deliberately politics-free vision of 1960s Yugoslavia is the whole point or a soft-focus evasion — charm or escapism, depending on who's reviewing.

Its footprint

It turned Sremski Karlovci into a pilgrimage stop — visitors still seek out the historic gymnasium where it was shot — and its title (a Serbian idiom for chasing the impossible) travels well beyond the film itself.

Where it stands

A cornerstone of post-Yugoslav popular cinema and a beloved regional comfort film, adored at home (with towering audience ratings) while remaining almost unknown to cinephiles outside the Balkans.

Did you know? Though the story unfolds in the fictional town of 'Moravski Karlovci', the film was shot at the real Karlovci Gymnasium in Sremski Karlovci — the oldest Serbian gymnasium, founded in 1791 — and the school has been a minor tourist draw ever since.