Reisverhalen - Belgrado - Bar

In 1974, during the regime of Marshall Broz Tito, a railway track was built between Belgrade in Serbia and Bar in Montenegro. A connection between two fraternal nations, `two eyes in the same head', as the later Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic phrased it. But times changed: Milosevic was incarcerated in The Hague, arraigned by the Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, and Serbia and Montenegro signed a loose federation treaty which was to be the overture of a definitive separation, of which fierce advocates and opponents lived in both countries. Most travellers on the railway section, though, mainly wanted to survive economically. The film portrays two Montenegrin conductors, a Bosnian signalman and a smuggling gypsy. The track itself has already anticipated the dissolution: on the Serbian part of the section, only Serbian trains with Serbian conductors run nowadays, and across the border Montenegrin trains are manned by Montenegrins.