For A Million Years

For A Million Years is a universal story about humanism, unity and a romantic belief that music can change the world. In 1984, Irish punk rock musician Bob Geldof started the biggest humanitarian project in history of pop music - Live Aid. Yugoslavia, a communist country oriented toward the West, contributed to the global project both with the original song For a Million Years and the concert featuring Yugoslavian pop and rock ’n’ roll stars. This is a story about the most powerful humanitarian music event in the history of the country that doesn’t exist anymore.

The story begins in the mid 80’s, in the London apartment of a then very tired rock star Bob Geldof and his girlfriend Paula Yates, an influential rock journalist. Geldof is depressed, he is in a creative and spiritual crisis. They are watching BBC reportage from Africa about the death of thousands of children as a result of a massive humanitarian catastrophe in several African countries. Bob is deciding to forge a different path and discover his new purpose in life with an idea to start massive humanitarian project that becomes global right away.

In Yugoslavia, two friends, a composer and a rock musician Dragan Ilic - Ilke and Mladen Popovic, TV presenter and song writer are starting Yu Rock Mission project. They produce a song For A Million Years with all of the major Yugoslavian pop and rock stars. Predrag Peca Popovic, rock journalist and promoter jumps in with an idea for a concert and single LP record that will be sold via the music magazine Rock. The leading team of Yu Rock Mission decides to fight for their creative freedom and to stay away from the communist structures in order to keep their integrity so government officials end up not fully backing up the concert at the Marakana stadium, since they did not allow the audiences to watch the concert from the grass field.

Concert is a disaster but the single record is sold out and some money from the tickets is collected. The whole Yu Rock Mission project motivated Yugoslavian citizens and huge companies to donate to the mission so the amount of the money raised is way larger. Money, supplies and food for Africa were distributed through the local UNICEF office and Yugoslavian Red Cross. Song became an evergreen classic that still stands and inspires new generations. This film would love to tell a universal story about humanism, power of unity and fellowship and provoke current times in which cynicism is dominant global feeling.