Red-haired Zora

The novel for teenagers “Red Zora and her gang” was written by Kurt Kläber under the pseudonym Kurt Held after staying in Senj on the eve of World War Two, and published for the first time in 1941. A 13-episode TV series of the same name was shot in Senj in 1978 as a German-Swiss-Yugoslavian co-production.
The plot takes place in Senj in the 1930s, and Kurt Held based his story on real people and events. 14-year-old Zora is the leader of a gang of orphans who call themselves the uskoks and hide in the Nehaj Fortress above the town of Senj. The gang’s members make their living from petty theft, but steal only from the rich. After the funeral of his mother, the 12-year-old boy Branko is sent by his neighbours to stay with his grandmother who lives in the country. But she is an eccentric cruel old woman, who chases Branko away from the house the next day, leaving him to live on his own. Branko soon gets into trouble and ends up in prison from where he is rescued by Zora, so he soon joins her gang of orphans – Nikola, Đuro and Pavle. Parallel with the story of Branko and Zora we follow the story of conflict between local individuals in power – the rich farmer Karaman and the corrupt mayor – with the poor fisherman Gorian, the only protector of the orphans.
For all those who already know and love Zora, and all those who are only now getting to know about her, we have prepared a tour of the town in which a modern red-haired Zora will lead us through some of the most important locations in and around the town where the series was shot. Next to photographs of the town, each page of this booklet contains some scenes from the series that were shot at these particular locations. Apart from professional actors, many amateurs from Senj also participated in the series, such as two boys from Zora’s gang – Branko and Nikola, and many other extras whom you can still encounter while walking the streets of Senj…
This booklet was designed to help us remember some of the interesting scenes from the series and identify the locations where individual scenes were shot. Let’s discover the town underneath Nehaj in the company of the Red Zora!