In depth · Balkan cinema
Montenegro on film: Bulajić, the cinematheque and the Bond that never was
Our long read on Balkan cinema tells the story of the whole region; this page gathers the films, the stars and the places that belong to Montenegro, with official trailers wherever they exist.
Updated 2026-10-25
Veljko Bulajić, from Montenegro to the world’s screens
The director of The Battle of Neretva (1969), Veljko Bulajić, was born in 1928 in Vilusi, in western Montenegro. His epic, with Yul Brynner, Orson Welles and Franco Nero, was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film, and Pablo Picasso drew one of its posters.
Casino Royale: the Montenegro that was filmed elsewhere
In Casino Royale (2006) James Bond plays his great game of poker in Montenegro. In fact the hotel and the casino were filmed at Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, so Montenegro’s own coast, from the Bay of Kotor to Sveti Stefan, still waits for its Bond moment. Dušan Makavejev, for his part, called one of his films Montenegro (1981), though it is set in Sweden.
The Montenegrin Cinematheque
Founded in 2000, the Montenegrin Cinematheque collects and screens the country’s films, with retrospectives and film weeks in its hall in Podgorica.
Montenegrin Cinematheque Cinema in Podgorica: the back story Balkan Cinema: our long read on the ULTIMATE Regions guide
Join the conversation
Which film says Montenegro to you? Share your favourite scenes and the places they were filmed.
- Loading the conversation…
Sources: the Festival de Cannes (festival-cannes.com), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (oscars.org), the Berlinale and the Venice Biennale archives, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (havc.hr), the AFI Catalog, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA, Sixth Tone, SBS and the festival press, checked on 25 October 2026. Trailers are embedded from the official YouTube channels of each film’s producer, distributor or national film centre; where none exists online, we leave it out. Stories about stars and the region are many, and we print only those we can check.