BBC: Plans to broadcast Venezuelan soap opera “Kassandra” in Bosnia due to war fears

When the Venezuelan channel RCTV premiered the soap opera “Cassandra” in the afternoon in October 1992, success was immediate.

By BBC News World

The story of a young woman who was transformed as a child and given to a poor and nomadic gypsy family living in a circus, who returns at the age of 18 to her hometown, where her original millionaire family lives is, and he discovers the truth of his story., enthralled Venezuelans with its 150 chapters.

It was the 1990s and the soap opera craze had reached everyone.

Those melodramatic Latin American fantasies with exaggerated tales of love, heartbreak, and the dream of rising from poverty to riches were a global phenomenon.

Antonio Páez was executive vice president of Coral Pictures, RCTV’s subsidiary in Caracas and Miami, and worldwide distributor of its soap operas.

“All the novels at that time were very popular and in fact, they opened up many markets like China or Russia. Later the novels became very popular, for example, in Israel. “We were popular all over the world,” Page told the BBC.

“Kassandra” was also sold to countries such as the United States, Romania, Greece, Italy and Russia, and members of the former Yugoslavia.

In 1997, residents of the Republika Srpska in “Kassandra” were in suspense, the entity that together with the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina forms the European country Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The region had been suffering from years of war and political and social turmoil, and the conflict was still not resolved.

Paez said, “It was a very tumultuous time and, in fact, I discovered that this novel had crippled that entire field.”

The soap opera hero said, “No matter what people were experiencing, at least for an hour they could disconnect from the harsh, cruel and bloody reality they were living to immerse themselves in Cassandra’s love story “

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