Forget those OTT dystopian horror pics (Zombies, Undead, Roadie terrorists in barren scrub land), Yugoslavia 1999 was the real deal, no CGI necessary. A no-way-out proposition of a country, torn in two by sectarian violence and NATO bombing. It’s the slice-of-life drama targeted for his feature debut by writer/director Ognjen Glavonic in this deliberately paced, taciturn look at a few local misérables, given its P.O.V. by one bearish middle-aged truck driver transporting a high-priority mystery load he’d prefer not to know anything about. Working his way from Kosovo to Belgrade around road blocks; stopping at a motel to phone home as an oddly threatening country wedding whirls about him; reluctantly accepting a teenage passenger trying to get out of the country (and forging an unlikely/temporary bond); spending the night at the routing office while his truck is ‘serviced.’ Then it’s back home before more of the same, hopefully a last run, and probably without his wife and rebellious teenage son to return to as they’re off to her father’s to find safety. Grim and grimy, yet not without notes of grace between the stillness and general suspense, caught in what could be the calm before the storm. It’s an unsettling place to be and an unsettling film, memorably so.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The way Ognjen Glavonic uses his cast, you might think they’re non-pros pulled off the streets of Belgrade, but all the larger parts taken by actors with lots of credits; the lead Leon Lucev with an impressive 76 titles on IMDb.
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