Žarko Laušević will be remembered for numerous roles from cult films, series and theater plays, and one that definitely marked his career is the role of Miloš Obilić in the production of “Battle in Kosovo”.
Source: YouTube/screenshot/Srpska thing
The legendary actor, Žarko Laušević died at the age of 64 after a short and serious illness, he spent his last days in the hospital, and the words he spoke before his death brought tears to my eyes. He left numerous great roles behind, and there would have been even more if a terrible night had not happened in 1993 that marked him forever.
Among his biggest roles, perhaps the most popular is the role of Miloš Obilić in the 1989 film “Battle in Kosovo”, directed by Zdravko Šotra. The lines he uttered in this film remained engraved in the viewer’s memory – “Let those who did not know know from today that Serbia is not a carpet, that Kosovo is not a silk pillow. Serbs know something more expensive than a head. Serbia is not a handful of rice to be eaten by every crow which the wind brings”, is the famous sentence that Miloš Oblić (Žarko Laušević) said in chains in front of the wounded Sultan Murat.
The film “Battle in Kosovo” was shot by director Zdravko Šotra in just one month, and Laušević described his memory of working on this project in the book “A year passes, a day never”, where he revealed how he almost died on the set.
“Once Miloš Obilić plays”: Žarko Laušević escaped death during the filming of the movie “Battle in Kosovo”
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“Spring, 1989. We are filming ‘Battle in Kosovo’.
Deliblat sandstone.
I arrive at the shoot and realize I have a new horse!
“Where’s my Lisa?” I ask.
“Lauše”, answers Dagi, the director’s assistant, my longtime friend, “Television could no longer pay for the services of the previous stable, so they decided to manage, somehow. You have a new horse from today! Look how beautiful he is!’
I am looking at a truly beautiful horse, bathed in foam and sweat.
A character I have not seen before in the film approaches, in the company of Fiča, the stuntman. The boy is wet:
“Don’t worry, Žare, I rode him all morning, he will be calm.”
‘Son, this is not a riding horse! This is a stallion’.
A new character, apparently the owner, proudly pats the stallion and casually throws me:
‘Fuck him, Miloš Obilić plays once in his life!’
A little later, the van, with a camera recording ‘Obilić’ at a gallop, overturned in a ditch because my stallion overtook it. The driver later told me that they were going 60 km/h when he noticed that I was catching up with my horse and heading towards them. I couldn’t stop him. I tried everything I learned in the riding club ‘Militioner’, in Banjica, and nothing worked. Then, at a gallop, I began to free myself of the heavy equipment that could kill me in a fall. I threw the spear first, then the helmet.
Source: Youtube/ Centar Film
The horse charged at everything in our way. As if through a fog, I remember that some people jumped aside at the last moment. I realized that I had to jump off the horse, because he intended to knock me against the truck with the generator, which was about fifty meters away. Perhaps only a few seconds earlier I had resisted with my hands on the saddle and thrown backwards. I’m falling. I see a horse in front of me, which quickly, after releasing the excess from its back, stopped calmly. I lie down and start to feel tingling all over my body. I’m not moving.
People from the team run up. Above me, I see the living legend of Yugoslav cinema, Batu Živojinović, who, with a half-plastered mustache, is urinating with laughter. Roosters are becoming more and more present. It’s like they caress me. Why is Bata laughing?
‘Dude, you fell on an anthill!’
Afterwards, unharmed, I sat on the same horse and shot the scene again. Dad says to me:
“Dude, I’ve been riding for forty years and I’ve never seen eyes like that on a horse. He wanted to kill you. Well, so be it, but you could also drive me and this girl, Anita, who glued my mustache to the mother’s pussy. At the last moment, we jumped to the side”.
I ask Dagi from the horse:
‘Tell me, mother, how much did they pay for the horse I rode until yesterday?’
‘120,000 dinars a day!’
‘And this horse’, I pointed at myself, ‘they pay 90,000!’
‘Gross!’, he laughed helplessly.
At that moment, 90,000 dinars in Yugoslavia, that is, before Anto Marković’s reform, could buy $15 US. So the bravest Serbian leader, ‘Miloš Obilić’, increased the budget”.
Battle in Kosovo Žarko Laušević Source: YouTube/Centar film/screenshot