The city is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for filmmakers. Whether as a mere location for a shoot, or the subject itself of a film, the urban environment allows singular work on lighting and movement, both cornerstones of motion pictures. Like the masters of urban symphony, such as Walter Ruttmann (1887-1941) with Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) or Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) with The Man with a Camera (1929), Maks Kalmić (1905-1941) goes over and beyond the documentary genre, playing on the dialogue between the images, often fixed, and the music. This editing work brings poetry and sometimes humour to the tale of this day in Belgrade.

Priča jednog dana is a documentary which stands out thanks to the originality of its style and tone. It's part of the remarkable documentary production which Artistik Film developed since 1926, brought to a sudden halt by the invasion of Yugoslavia by Axis forces in April 1941. The Nazis dismembered Yugoslavia, and re-formed a Serbian State, under the helm of General Milan Nedić (1878-1946). Belgrade was occupied by the German army. A few months after the first projection of his film, Maks Kalmić was put before the firing squad, thus becoming one of the first Jewish victims of Nazism in Belgrade. His short film career ended when he was but 35 years old. The joyful atmosphere of the short, in which the tension of the nearing war is in no way sensed, is far from auguring the tragic events that were to come.

The singer who appears in the last scene of the film is Milan Timotić (1908-1988), one of the most popular Serbian singers before World War II. Prisoner during the war, he took exile in the United States at the end of the conflict.