Here and There

Colour, 35 mm
Serbia, Germany, USA, 2009, 90 min
EP – European premiere
Section: Variety Critics’ Choice

Synopsis

In his first fiction film, Serbian director Lungulov contrasts the adventures of an enterprising young Belgrade native in New York with the discoveries of an aging down-and-out New Yorker in Belgrade. American actor David Thornton plays a burnt-out, 52-year old jazz musician who accepts an offer of $5,000 from moving man Branko (Branislav Trifunovic) to travel to Serbia and marry his girlfriend in order to legally get her into the United States. Once in Belgrade, Robert finds himself falling for Branko’s mother (veteran actress Mirjana Karanovic), while things get out of hand for Branko, who’s thrust into the junkyards, back alleys and police stations of the Big Apple after the theft of his van. Lungulov’s laid-back character study accrues small epiphanies with patient care, its mordant Eastern European humor tempered by a gentler sense of postwar absurdity.