Imagining Interwar Sound and Space: Film Music and Cultural Memory in the Post-Yugoslav Context

In recent decades, the interwar period has emerged as a fertile ground for artistic imagination, inspiring a growing body of works across literature, visual arts, and film. Global and regional cinema plays a compelling role in reconstructing and reinterpreting this historical era. Given the centrality of music to everyday life in the interwar years, it naturally becomes an important element in shaping cinematic representations of the past. This article examines how music in Dragan Bjelogrlić’s films Montevideo, God Bless You! (2010) and See You in Montevideo (2014) contributes to the evocation of life in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at the very juncture of the 1920s and 1930s. By focusing on the deployment of musical genres and their stylistic connotations, the study situates the soundtrack at the intersection of film music and everyday life studies, collective identity, cultural memory theory, thanatopolitics and post-Yugoslav cultural discourse. Rather than merely treating music as a decorative or atmospheric element, the paper explores how sound actively constructs historical imagination, reinforces collective identity, and shapes affective engagement with the past.