It’s Hard to Be Nice

Colour, 35 mm
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, United Kingdom, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, 2007, 102 min
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

40-year-old Fudo is a taxi driver from Sarajevo. Aside from that, he collaborates with the local underworld, giving robbers tips on houses whose owners are away on holiday. Because of his wife and – most importantly – his small son he decides to ditch the latter activity. Shaking free of one’s own past is not easy, however. He starts with a new car, and to buy it he borrows money from a colleague – who nonetheless wants a favour in return. What’s more, Fudo’s first passenger in his “new” life is a pregnant woman he takes to the hospital where he is assumed to be the child’s father. Fudo however is not about to compromise his resolution, and he continues to try to be a better person. This, Srdjan Vuletić’s second feature film, is the story of a man who radically turns over a new leaf. His transformation is made all the more difficult in that it plays out in the modern Bosnian metropolis of Sarajevo, a city that is also searching for itself. Saša Petrović won Best Actor at the national festival held in Sarajevo.

About the director

Srdjan Vuletić (b. 1971, Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina) studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, where he also made short films. In 1992 he worked as a medical technician in a hospital, an experience that paid off when he made his documentary film I Burnt Legs (Palio sam noge, 1993), which won a European Film Award a year later. As a member of SaGA (Sarajevo Group of Authors) he has directed a number of successful documentaries. His feature film debut was The Summer in the Golden Valley (Ljeto u zlatnoj dolini, 2004), which follows the adolescence of a sixteen-year-old boy who tries to redress the mistakes of his father in post-war Sarajevo. The response that the film provoked (Rotterdam, Sofia) contributed to Srdjan Vuletić being voted Director of the Year.