I decided to combine day 3 and 4 of my visit to Belgrade, Serbia together for this post. Mostly because each day involved wondering around town and taking pictures of the old buildings and seeing some of the signs. Also, since we were in town for a film festival we spent most of the time watching films and meeting other filmmakers.

On my YouTube show No Budget I often point out that most film festivals don’t offer the return on investment that most filmmakers think they are going to get. We usually submit our films to festivals in the hopes that a distributor will see it and pick it up, or some Hollywood producer will see it and offer us a project. In truth, there are probably only about five festivals in the world where that might happen, and sorry to say, this is not one of them. However, festivals do offer something that does make submitting a film and attending them worth it, and that is the opportunity to interact with other filmmakers. At the festival, you get to watch other films by independent filmmakers and learn from them. At film festivals, you get the chance to talk to filmmakers, actors, and others involved in filmmaking. It is those interactions that make attending festivals such as this worthwhile.

Now back to the streets of Serbia. The weather, for the most part, was pretty nice considering we were in Serbia in December. The weather did start to get cold on the final day of the trip with some freezing rain. However, we did manage to find a restaurant for breakfast that wasn’t full of smokers. So if you are looking for a place check out The Red Bread. The food was good and as mentioned it was possible to enjoy a meal without wondering how many years were being deducted from our lives for all the cigarette smoke hanging in the air around us.  Here is an interesting yet not surprising at all fact about Serbia, the 4th highest cause of death in the country is Lung Cancer.

For dinner that evening we were out with a couple locals and managed to find a great restaurant. As they often say when traveling, go where the locals go. And when we did we had a delicious meal and some good drinks.

A few observations about Belgrade

• Everyone we encountered spoke fluent English
• Find a local to visit places with
• The food and alcohol is inexpensive
• Random people you encounter are not the most friendly
• It is a smokers paradise

This blog post has also been published to my substack