TERET/ THE LOAD

Serbia, 2018, 98 minutes, Colour.
Leon Lucev.
Directed by Ognjen Glavonic.

This is an arthouse film which won many nominations and awards at film festivals. It is a film that would be appreciated in art houses and festivals – very heavy-going for most audiences.

The setting is the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. The focus is on a truck driver who has a mission to take a truck from its country setting to Belgrade. It is not revealed what the contents are – suggestions, especially when held up by the authorities, that it is special and secret.

The film is a portrait of the driver, middle-aged man, his wife is ill, his making phone calls to enquire about her. There is a fire on the highway and he has to seek an alternate route, a young man who has worked with a band asks for a lift, has some conversation with the driver and revealing something about himself and his situation with the war, his band and his family. The driver stops to make enquiries and is given alternate routes, especially through the mountains. At one of the stops, he encounters people celebrating a wedding. He drives through the mountainous terrain, coming to a crossroads, and taking a risk where he turns.

Eventually, he arrives and delivers the truck and then returns to his family, his 16-year-old son who has some resentment for his father being absent, encountering his wife, and watching young people gather hay and burn it .

Early in the film there is a mysterious sequence where number of people get off a boat and one man goes to an inn where he has a conversation with a woman.

While some appreciated the atmosphere of the film, life in the time of war and bombardment, others found it too puzzling – and too tedious – for their sensibilities.