MOSCOW — Goran Paskaljevic’s haunting “When Day Breaks” is Serbia’s nomination for consideration in the foreign language Oscars.
The film stars Mustafa Nadarevic (“No Man’s Land”) as a retired music professor who finds out the truth about his past when a wartime metal box containing a musical score is found near the site of a concentration camp in Belgrade. Pic is slated to world preem in Toronto’s Masters section.
Paskaljevic told Variety, “Almost all the events are based on facts.”
The director wrote the script with his friend Filip David, who was saved from being sent to the camp as a one-year-old when his parents put him in the care of Serbian Orthodox friends who bought him up under an assumed name.
David’s parents survived the war, but two of his uncles died.
The film’s authenticity won it support from the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the five nominees for best foreign film on Jan. 15. The 85th Academy Awards ceremony takes place Feb. 24.
