17/08/2021 - Danis Tanović’s newest post-lockdown comedy advocates for loyal friendship as well as for sticking to one’s roots and tradition

It’s not easy to get a grasp on Bosnian helmer Danis Tanović’s eclectic filmography featuring diverse styles and genres, ranging from arthouse to mainstream and from drama to thriller while addressing varying target audiences. After the historically reflexive and dialogue-based drama Death in Sarajevo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danis Tanovic
film profile] (2016), Tanović made a swift turn with the mainstream crime thriller The Postcard Killings [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2020), entirely shot and produced in the United States. Now he is back home again and opened the 27th Sarajevo International Film Festival with the locally rooted situation comedy Not So Friendly Neighbourhood Affair [+see also:
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film profile] that rather resembles his namesake’s Ines Tanovic’s domestic melodramas (Our Everyday Life [+see also:
film review
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interview: Ines Tanović
film profile], The Son [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ines Tanović
film profile]) than his own so far demonstrated patterns, although there are noticeable hints that the production’s goal is to travel internationally, too.

Sarajevo, according to Not So Friendly Neighbourhood Affair, is heaven on Earth when it comes to eating meat fingers, something we are being convinced of throughout the whole film starting with the archival promotional opening images. Each of the two protagonists owns a ćevapčići shop in the old town, opposite one another: Enis (music and film star Branko Đurić) is the modern type of entrepreneur who likes to get involved in risky endeavours and show off at the cost of living on credit, while Izo (acclaimed Bosnian actor Izudin Bajrović) craves a calm, honourable life and hopes that his daughter Lana (Helena Vuković), recently returned from Germany with a chef master diploma, will take over the business, marry Enis’ son Orhan (Kerim Čutuna) and settle down close to him. Every morning they chit-chat about current public and private affairs over a Turkish coffee at the nearby café owned by a hot-tempered war veteran (Goran Navojec) – repeating scenes that paint a homey yet cosmopolitan Sarajevo, just at the quieter outskirts of the big crazy world and relatively free of COVID stress. Eventually, their neighbourly co-existing universes clash when a Croatian foodie influencer announces Izo’s meat fingers to be the best in town. This brings him too much unwanted visibility and a crowd of clients, while Enis’s business starts to fall into decay. An initially innocent intrigue, it messes up everything around there and starts to recall the Montagues and Capulet’s battle by even troubling their children’s relationship. Some dark mafia affair unfolds as well, just to add a spicy note to the storyline shortly before it all culminates in a municipal contest aiming to decide on the best ćevapčići maker in Sarajevo.

The events in the film take place in late spring after the first worldwide lockdown and, as expected from a light wide audience comedy, the plot development is quite straightforward. The conflict and the denouement are crystal clear to the point of tediousness and the characters are stereotypically designed: the western type of thinking (represented by Lana who would rather live abroad) is marked by newly adopted vegetarianism and strict mask wearing, while the Balkan spirit is expectedly labeled by familiarity, frivolousness (when it comes to rules) and dark humour. However, the film fails to extract the best of the Balkan humour, so what is probably supposed to be a hilarious comedy of misunderstandings with an absurdist touch is more of a pallid attempt. Sarajevo’s emblematic historical centre Baščaršija is the omnipresent film set, cozy and embellished through the camera lens of Reuters photographer Damir Šagolj who achieves an attractive gourmet advertising kind of imagery.

Not So Friendly Neighbourhood Affair is produced by Obala Art Centar, TRT and co-produced by Poetika Film.