Generation of Chinese film goers took Yugoslav drama into its heart

For Chinese people who have hit the half-century mark, scenes from a film depicting wartime Yugolsavia can be recalled with almost consumate ease.

The 1972 Serbo-Croatian language production on underground partisans during World War II, Walter Defends Sarajevo, which is perhaps unfamiliar to most Western filmgoers, is an important collective memory for one generation of Chinese people.

The film shows the twists and turns as Walter's partisans fight the Nazis. At the end of the film, a Nazi officier stands on a hill overlooking Sarejevo and realizes that the reason he could not defeat Walter is that the city is Walter.