I Will Marry The Whole Village

A Serbian accordionist on a comic mission to marry 300 bachelors.

Peca is an accordionist from the Serbian village of Matejevac who has spent much of his life as a bachelor. Driven by a promise made at his father's grave, he sets out to fulfil his late father's most heartfelt wish: to see the unmarried men of the village finally wed. In a region where women have long moved to the city in search of better opportunities, roughly a third of the male population has been left behind without any realistic prospect of finding a partner.

Acting like a self-appointed Cupid, Peca begins recording video portraits of the village's single men so that he can show the footage to women and eventually organise a local celebration in their honour. His motto, delivered with disarming sincerity, is that he will marry the whole village even if he comes to regret it. The result is a warm and comedic panorama of rural Serbian life, in which solitude and longing for companionship are everyday realities for ordinary men.

I Will Marry The Whole Village is a docucomedy and music documentary directed, written, and produced by Zeljko Mirkovic for Optimistic Film. Mirkovic follows Peca's errands with a meticulous camera, traversing the village and letting its inhabitants speak for themselves. The film was released in 2010 and screened at numerous international documentary festivals, winning the Jury Prize at the Al Jazeera Documentary Festival in Doha, Qatar, among other distinctions. It stands as a humorous yet affectionate account of rural depopulation, matchmaking, and the enduring human desire for connection.