Fuse

Zalica’s moving tragi-comedy about life after the war in Bosnia has both feet firmly rooted in the rich local film tradition; echoes of classic cinema from former Yugoslavia are audible and visible. After all the misery of war, Zalica wanted to make a film about peace and peacetime but, as he noted, that can occasionally be just as bad. It becomes apparent in the opening scene that not everything is quite that peaceful in the Bosnian town of Tesanj. Yet the firemen do their exercises and the honest, hard-working inhabitants seem to live together in harmony. Behind the first impressions there is however a different Tesanj; former Serbian inhabitants who want to return are cursed in the street, booby traps still claim victims and not all the dead have been found. The town is really run by a crook involved in tobacco, drink and people smuggling. He is eagerly assisted by the chief of police. When a report is published that President Clinton will come to Tesanj to become patron of the town, all hell breaks loose. All the whores, crooked bookkeeping and illegal goods have to be hidden as soon as possible and the Serbian and Bosnian Fire Brigades have to cooperate. Fuse was given the Silver Leopard at the Locarno Festival.