18/04/2008

Since the collapse of former Yugoslavia, there are about 1,800 Bosnians living in North Dakota. The Coen Brothers made one of its towns famous with Fargo. This is where Croatian writer-director Goran Rusinovic's new film Buick Riviera takes place, and where it was shot.

"We were scouting locations and needed snow – Fargo turned out to be perfect," says producer Boris T. Matic.

Independent filmmaker Rusinovic (Mondo Bobo, 1997) moved to New York in 2002 and a year later got the book Buick Riviera by one of Bosnia’s most popular writers, his and Matic’s friend Miljenko Jergovic.

In the psychological drama, two Bosnian immigrants, a Muslim and a Serb, accidentally meet on a deserted highway in the middle of the US. They spend the next 24 hours mentally sabotaging each other in a discussion about who is to blame for the war in Bosnia. Slavko Stimac and Leon Lucev star.

Matic heads production company Propeler Film, behind some of Croatia’s most popular films. "It was not easy shooting in the US with a budget of €550,000," he says. The Sarajevo Film Festival’s co-production market CineLink brought €13,000 and some 40% of the budget was provided by the Croatian Film Fund.

With Bosnia’s Refresh, German company Tradewind Pictures, the UK's F&ME and New York-based Platform onboard, Bavaria International took on international sales and put up a minimum guarantee, completing the budget. But the problems did not end there.

On the last day shooting in March 2007, 18 reels of film were exposed when a DHL employee ran them through an X-ray machine. "Fargo has a small airport so the reels went by regular airplane. I call it collateral damage from 9/11," says Matic. Insurance money allowed them to shoot for another five days in January 2008 and then five more in Bosnia.

Buick Riviera is aiming for Cannes, but if not selected will have its premiere at the Croatian National Film Festival in Pula.