"Yugo Goes to America" Opens in Serbian Cinemas
The documentary "Yugo Goes to America" hits Serbian cinemas on September 3, after wins at CPH:DOX and Beldocs and praise from John Wilson.
There is something irresistibly funny about a car that spent decades as a punchline in its own homeland now tearing down an American highway as the star of a film screening around the world. The Yugo, the cult Yugoslav car once crowned the “worst car in history” in the United States, stops being just an urban legend and a nostalgia trip as of tomorrow. It becomes an actual movie star. The feature documentary “Yugo Goes to America” enters regular distribution in cinemas across Serbia on September 3.
The film follows a group of Serbian millennials who set off across the United States in that very car, a Yugo, and the trip works as both a literal journey and a metaphor: a vehicle that once symbolized failure in America becomes the reason for an entirely different encounter with the country. Beyond the regular theatrical run, audiences in Belgrade get a chance to meet the filmmakers in person: a special screening is set for Saturday, September 5, at 8 p.m. at Arena Cineplex, with part of the film crew attending and taking questions from viewers afterward.
The film is directed by Filip Grujic and Aleksa Borkovic, marking their feature directing debut. Grujic is an award winning writer, playwright and director, author of three novels and a winner of both the Sterija Award and the “Mihiz” award for dramatic writing. Borkovic is a director and cinematographer whose short film “Cekaj me ovde” (“Wait for Me Here”) premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival; on this project he also shot the film himself.
The road “Yugo Goes to America” traveled to reach Serbian cinemas speaks for itself. Its world premiere was at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, and at Belgrade’s Beldocs it opened the festival and won the audience award, along with a special mention in the TEEN selection. A regional premiere followed at the Pula Film Festival, while theatrical distribution in Croatia began on August 17. Only after all of that does the film arrive in front of the audience it was essentially made for, the one that knows every squeak a Yugo makes.
Alongside the official poster marking the start of distribution came an endorsement from John Wilson, the American documentarian and creator of HBO’s “How To with John Wilson,” known for turning other people’s everyday lives into absurdist poetry. His verdict on the film:
Great movie. A fun ride. Like a game of musical chairs, you never know what’s going to happen next.
Praise from someone who has built a career observing everyday American life from the inside is no small thing for a film that looks at that very everyday life through the eyes of a newcomer riding in a Yugo. That angle is likely also what makes “Yugo Goes to America” appealing to audiences outside the region, viewers who don’t know the car as a family memory but as an anecdote about socialist era industry.
The filmmakers themselves greet the return home, to Serbian cinemas, with words that sound less like marketing and more like a circle closing:
Traveling is exciting, but the point of every journey is to come home. We went through a lot with the Yugo, it took us to places we couldn’t have imagined we’d end up, and without it we probably never would have gotten there at all. That’s why we’re thrilled that starting in September we get to share this adventure and this search with audiences back home. Both the ones who know the Yugo by heart, and the ones the Yugo knows.
Distribution in Serbia is handled by Art Vista, and the film is produced by the Solak family and United Media Group. Borkovic also served as cinematographer, Kristina Todorovic edited the film, Bosko Mijuskovic composed the music, and Tihomir Vrbanec did the sound design. The project was backed by the Eurimages fund, the Film Center Serbia and the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, which also explains why the film’s run through festivals and cinemas has played out regionally rather than just locally.
What makes “Yugo Goes to America” worth paying attention to isn’t just the novelty of its premise, but the fact that a domestic documentary is getting a regular theatrical release at all, instead of staying stuck on the festival circuit. The September 5 screening, with the crew in the room and a conversation after the film, turns that release into more than a formality: the audience will get to ask, directly, the people who drove a Yugo across America why they set out on that trip in the first place.
