Director Ognjen Glavonić, producer Stefan Ivančić and co-producer Ankica Jurić Tilić presented the film The Load with Leon Lučev in the lead role.

The film was rejected many times, and due to the lack of funds was not filmed for a full seven years. As the director said, the idea for the film came up in 2009, and he started working on it in 2011. He thinks the reason why the film was rejected numerous times is the theme: “It is about facing the dark past and the crimes of the 1990s”, he said.

The story of the film follows a truck driver who is transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. He knows that once the job is over, he will need to return home and face the consequences of his actions.

“Information about this topic was unavailable to me, but ten years later I discovered the truth in the paper”, Glavonić said and added that his story is based on the story of a man who doesn’t know what he’s really transporting and about how long he can pretend to not know.

Leon Lučev’s lines in the film are reduced, and the director thinks Lučev was the ideal actor for the role: “I’ve seen him in some films where he endures the plot in a similar way, so I offered him the role and he accepted”, he Glavonić said.

Stefan Ivančić said that what kept them going was pure enthusiasm about the film for which they pooled funds from all sides: “After Film Centre Serbia rejected us, we applied to various other calls for applications and financed the film from different sources”, he added. It is interesting that the funding first came from France, so they applied for funding in Croatia as a French film.

The film was talked about even before it went to Serbian cinemas, and the director thinks it is because there were efforts to cover up some of the things the film talks about. After it was released, the storm surrounding the film blew over.

Ankica Jurić Tilić admitted that she was drawn to the film by the persistence of young filmmakers in spite of years of rejection. The fact that it was screened at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes speaks to its quality, and the film has also seen fantastic success at festivals.

“The film speaks about something important and it will last”, Jurić Tilić emphasised and added that distribution in Croatia is ongoing.