CEV President attends ‘Brotherhood of the Court’ premiere in Ljubljana

Earlier this week, CEV President Roko Sikirić travelled to Ljubljana to join more than 500 other people for the highly anticipated premiere of the ‘Brotherhood of the Court’ series organised at Cankarjev dom in the Slovenian capital city. The first two episodes of the series were shown to an audience including many former and current national team players, coaches, and staff. Moreover, the guests included other members of the Slovenian Volleyball family, sponsors, partners, as well as the journalists involved in the coverage of the Slovenian national team and of their unprecedented achievements. 

The idea for the series was born in 2023. Alen Djordjevič, a former Volleyball player and now the team manager of the national team, came up with the idea that these guys deserve their own story and started filming behind the scenes documenting all the ups and downs they have experienced. On the other hand, Gašper Pavli, a former tennis player and creative director at a local sports marketing agency, thought that since sports documentary content has been booming and given the popularity of sports in Slovenia, it was time for Slovenians to get their first sports TV series. 

Fate ensured that Alen Djordjevič and Gašper Pavli exchanged their ideas, joined forces, and in the 2024 season, a professional filming crew joined the national team. Nik Gradišnik spent the entire season with the national team with a camera. The guys immediately took him in, and he captured the feelings of the team like no one else could. 

Alen, who was once a member of the team, knew all the relationships between the players and had an “insider’s” look into the entire journey of Team Slovenia over the past 20 years. He received the green light from the players to film everything, without censorship, and to use it only for the purpose of this series and only on the condition that they would qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. 

Based on all the stories, Gašper began writing a script, which of course took on new forms as it was impossible to predict what would happen. After the Paris Olympics came the hardest part – post-production. More than 400 hours of material, over 60 interviews and 20 years of historical archive footage had to be connected into a meaningful whole. The turning point came when Alen, Gašper and Nik locked themselves in a hut in Pokljuka for three days in September, reviewing the footage, looking for a common thread and laying the foundations for the script for the series. 

The project involved an increasingly larger team and a period began in which the authors forgot about their families, friends and events outside the project for a while. The series was produced under the auspices of the Sport Media Focus agency, and Telekom Slovenije, a long-time sponsor of Team Slovenia, also joined as a co-producer. The key shift was made possible by the FIVB, which recognised the extraordinary story of a group of men who have been playing for the national team for 20 years and who started from 64th place in the world rankings and rose to 2nd, since this could serve as a great inspiration for all other national teams across the globe. 

The series ‘Brotherhood of the Court’ is a six-episode sports drama about passion, sacrifice and brotherhood that goes beyond sports. It is a story of the ups, downs and invisible battles behind the scenes of one of the most respected teams in the world of Volleyball. From the first idea to the conclusion - this is a story of trust, perseverance and people who always believed in themselves. Both on the court and behind the camera.