Zeljko Mirkovic: Two Sport Documentaries
Serbian Zeljko Mirkovic introduces himself like this: “Dr. Zeljko Mirkovic is an award-winning film and TV director, educator, and lecturer with more than 20-years’ experience writing, producing, and directing diverse documentaries. He is a creative and innovative developer of feature films, television series, documentaries, promotional films, media campaigns, and commercials. With a Ph.D. in Communications and Media Studies, Dr. Mirkovic has received over 110 international awards and produced two Oscars qualified documentaries. Dr. Zeljko Mirkovic is Associate Research Professor at the University of Connecticut.”
It sounds very formal – Zeljko is not like that, when you know him, which I do and have done for more than 20 years, and I dare say that he has been diligent. His filmography is veeery long and impressive with a focus on stories from and portraits of Serbians, historically and now. If you search “Mirkovic” on this site you will see that I have posted several texts about films made by Zeljko and about the pleasure meeting him and his family, when in Belgrade. When he was young and a beginner he took part in workshops, that Paul Pauwels and I tutored in Belgrade, maybe he was the most committed mentee that we ever had, who took courses in English (and sent us a copy of his diploma!) to go international; now he is teaching at an American university!
As a sport interested person I wanted to see two of his new film portraits – Zeljko sent links to me: “Niki Pilić- The Legend” from 2024 and “Svetislav Pešic – More Than a Coach.” from 2015, both very interesting about coaches with an impressive international career. Charisma is an understatement to characterize them.
As a fan of everything connected to FCBarcelona, let me start with Svetislav Pešic, who was Barca’s basketball coach 2002-2004 and again 2018-2020, giving the club huge success especially in the first period. The film combines archive (a lot of important matches from his career), interviews with players who praise the coach for his professional and human skills, living for basketball, always on the road. That Zeljko cinematically uses in a perfect way, letting us see Pešic in and out of arenas with his rolling suitcase, and of course him on the sideline giving advices to his players. His son was a player and is now a manager in Bayern Munich, and what will the grandchild decide with whom there are fine scenes on the football pitch: football or basketball? Pešic is 75 years old and still active, he must have a record in coaching national and club teams!
Nikola Pilić is younger, 85 years old, and his sport is tennis. The film about him starts with a clip with Serbian superstar Novak Djokovic calling for “my tennis father” after a match. Pilić enters the arena and is hugged by Djokovic, who later on in the film reveals, how important it was for him to attend Sir Niko’s tennis academy, when he was a young lad.
Pilić became an important person in international tennis for different reasons. He made strong complaints about the conditions that were offered the players in Wimbledon, was banned by the Tennis Association from participation, colleagues supported him and the famous boycott of Wimbledon happened in 1973.
AND he became – as some of the interviewed players say – the best Davis Cup captain ever. “The only one who won the Davis Cup with three different countries” – Yugoslavia, Croatia and Germany. He is characterised as a master in tactics and was a master in diplomacy, when he had two stars, who did not like each other on his German team: Boris Becker and Michael Stich. He matched them and stood behind the gold medal to the two rivals playing together in double at the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. In other words a player, a trainer and a coach of great importance as the film shows through match archives, interviews with Pilić and Stich and many many others.
Photo of Svetislav Pešic taken from Wikipedia.
