The Secret of Nikola Tesla , is a 1980 Yugoslav biographical film about the inventor Nikola Tesla directed by Krsto Papić and starring Petar Božović as the title character.
Krsto Papić is a Croatian screenwriter and film director whose career spans several decades. Papić's early feature films and documentaries were part of Croatian and Yugoslav New Cinema, and often regarded as Croatian echo of the Serbian Black Wave, while Papić himself was connected... to the Croatian Spring. He was the member of the Zagreb filmophile circle influenced by the French New Wave, so-called "Hitchcockians", along with film-makers and critics Ante Peterlić, Zoran Tadić, Branko Ivanda, Petar Krelja and centered around film critics Vladimir Vuković and Hrvoje Lisinski. Papić's two best-known early feature films, Lisice and Predstava Hamleta u Mrduši Donjoj, were often attacked from the government sources. Lisice did not get permission to represent Yugoslavia in the Cannes Film Festival, so it entered Quinzaine program in 1970. Izbavitelj was heavily criticised by Stipe Šuvar, who alluded that film's allegory about Fascism actually also refers to the Communism.more