Serbian director Dinko Tucakovic has finished editing The State of the Dead, directed by his countryman Zivojin Pavlovic, who died before the film could be completed.

The final cut of the film will be ready for the upcoming Venice International Film Festival, where it will be shown as a homage to the late Pavlovic, one of the leaders, along with Dusan Makavejev and Aleksandar Petrovic, of Serbia's "black wave" movement which was banned by Yugoslavia's communist government in the late 1960s.

The film finished principal photography in 1998 but producer Delfin Film could not round up the post-production budget and Belgrade-based Komuna stepped in to finance its completion.

The film, written by one of Serbia's leading playwrights, Sinisa Kovacevic, tells the story of an old officer who continues his allegiance to the Yugoslav Army during the Yugoslav Civil War despite being Slovenian by nationality. Finally he ends up in Belgrade, deserted both by the Army and his Slovenian compatriots.