LAZIĆ: PLAYING DR. LAZIĆ IS THE GREATEST ROLE OF MY LIFE

BELGRADE, MARCH 11 /SRNA/ - Actor Aleksandar Lazić told SRNA that the greatest role of his life is playing the famous Serbian wartime surgeon Miodrag Lazić in the film "The Line," because the magnitude of this doctor's character is immense.

"I am convinced that this is the greatest role of my life because I will certainly never again have the chance to play someone like him, someone who until recently was still among us, whose family I was able to meet, his friends, and more than a hundred people he operated on. It was a great challenge, and it means a lot to me," Lazić said.

He stressed that working on this film, whose shooting will conclude on Friday, is a great honor for every artist because it deals with true events from the history of his people, but it is also a major challenge when portraying individuals who, through their work and dedication, transcended their time, such as Dr. Lazić.

He pointed out that he had known about Dr. Lazić and the book "Diary of a War Surgeon" even before the film, but that, thanks to this role and meeting people who knew him, he became aware of the enormous scale of Dr. Lazić's importance in the history of the Serbian people.

"I have no words for who we had in our history who was so great, so significant, such a humanitarian and so self-sacrificing, there is simply no comparable example," Lazić said.

Lazić assessed that the film stands out in quality compared with Serbian films made in the past 20 to 30 years, and he believes that, after producing such material, both the production team and all collaborators strongly hope it will also be shown abroad.

Domestic audiences may hope to see the film in September, although, as he explained, this depends on the time required for post-production.

"We would most like it to premiere on September 15 in East Sarajevo, then in Niš, and after that in Belgrade. We can hardly wait to see how everything turned out," said Lazić.

The film "The Line" is a historical anti-war drama inspired by the book Diary of a War Surgeon by Miodrag Lazić. It is being filmed based on a screenplay by director Dragan Elčić and writer Željko Pržulj, with one of the storylines depicting the epic exodus of 120,000 Serbs from Sarajevo.

Dr. Miodrag Lazić voluntarily left Niš in 1992 and went to the Sarajevo battlefield, to the wartime hospital Žica Hospital, to help fighters of Republika Srpska who were dying from their wounds because they did not have adequate medical care.

The film is being produced by Ramonda Production from Belgrade, with Goran Ikonić as producer. A significant role in the filming is also played by the production company Prvi Kadar from Istočno Sarajevo, which serves as the executive producer for Republika Srpska.

The final scene will be filmed on Friday, March 13, at the Kovilj Monastery, where the last clap of this historical anti-war drama will symbolically mark the end of filming.