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D ue to one tragic event, but first and fore- most the way she recovered and the satis- faction that she later found, the life of Na- taša Kovačević has all the elements required for a screenplay, which recently also gained the form of a film called Skok [Jump]. Nataša spent a full six long years making the film, in which she describes her struggle with the consequen- ces of what she survived on 7 th September 2013, when the entire team of her then basketball club, Győr, suffe- red a serious road accident that took the lives of the te- am coach and general manager, while the injuries susta- ined led to our basketball player having to have her left leg amputated below the knee. She was an extremely talented player who’d fallen in love with the game under the hoops while at Partizan, only to later mature at the Voždovac and Red Star clubs. She participated in three European championships with Serbia’s national cadet category team and won a bronze medal at the continental championships with the juni- or national team. By the age of 19, she was ready for her first foreign engagement. Next came a call from Hunga- rian club Győr, and then that traffic accident. Nataša poured all of the emotional breaks, reconsi- derations and motivational sources of her recovery and perception of her new life situation into the film Skok. She said herself that the most difficult thing for her du- ring the filming process was returning to the scene of the accident and confronting the emotions and memo- ries that will never fade. “The idea for the film came just before my first offi- cial match after the motor accident, in November 2015. Screenwriter Aleksandar Miletić, director Ivica Videno- vić and I had a clear goal: we wanted to show people, in a dynamic and optimistic way, that the obstacles we all face in life are transient. I believe that defeats and Through a retrospective of an unpleasant event, the film Skok [Jump] leads the viewer through the strong spirit of this heroine, eight years after the tragedy that completely changed the priorities of her life Tekst/Words: Aleksandar Pijevac Fotografije/Photography: Vesna Lalić, Zoran Ilić STORY OF TRAGEDY AND VICTORY The miraculous destiny of Nataša Kovačević

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