BUICK RIVIERA

A car from the 1960s embodies Hasan’s private American dream. In his Buick Riviera he drives through wintry North Dakota, where he sought refuge from the war and slaughtering that broke out in his Bosnian home. That was seventeen years ago, but he has yet to arrive in the USA. He is still unemployed, and his marriage to the policewoman Angela has seen better days. One day, his Buick gets stuck in the snow. Vuko, a Serb, happens to be passing and lends a helping hand to Hasan, the Muslim. Vuko came to the States five years ago, and has just walked out on his rich American wife. Friction is soon palpable between the two men as Vuko launches into a discussion of the enduring prejudices among the ex-Yugoslav ethnic groups, but the more introverted Hasan refuses to take him on. Vuko later appears at Hasan and Angela’s door, and a dangerous tension builds up as the former compatriots become ensnared in a strange game. Vuko plays the provocateur, Hasan delivers defiant responses – until the Bosnian hatches a plan. Croatian director Goran Rušinović begins his film as a slow-paced road movie then expands it into an intimate dramatic thriller. The meeting of two starkly contrasting characters is shown in striking images of winter, interspersed with fragmentary black-and-white flashbacks and dream sequences. The devastating war of the 1990s is shown as a continuing blight on the lives of people from the Balkans – no matter how far removed they are from the sites of the conflict.