The Load (2018)

• Year: 2018
• Released: 30 Aug 2019
• Country: Serbia, France, Croatia, Iran, Qatar
• Adwords: 16 wins & 18 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7163824/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_load
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-load
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Serbian
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Drama
• Runtime: 98 min
• Writer: Ognjen Glavonic, Geoffroy Grison
• Director: Ognjen Glavonic
• Cast: Leon Lucev, Novak Bilbija, Branko Perisic
• Keywords: lorry, serbia, truck,

	6.5/10
	75/100
	100% – Critics
	73% – Audience

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The Load Movie Reviews

“Once you make a decision, everything gets easier”.

I have an idea what director Ognjen Glavonic was trying to convey with this movie, but because of it’s often unfocused and meandering nature, I think the average viewer will find it boring and pointless. The main character is a burly and thuggish looking truck driver named Vlada Stefanovic (Leon Lucev), making a delivery through a war torn country on the way to Belgrade. Set during the late Nineties conflict between Serbian state forces with Kosovo Albanian separatists, the milieu will be unfamiliar to the average viewer, and the story line doesn’t add anything by way of explanation to help one understand. On his journey, interrupted by roadblocks along the way, Vlada picks up a hitchhiker, and their interaction reveals that the older man isn’t really a bad guy per se, he’s just trying to make ends meet with whatever job he could find to support his family. Though we never know what the truck’s cargo contains, a significant hint is offered at the final destination when Vlada is ordered to clean out his truck. The realization that he may have been trafficking fellow citizens to safety causes him to revisit the strained relationship he has with his own son. Mind you, this is just conjecture on my part, because that idea is never really made clear. The film ends rather abruptly, and for anyone disengaged to begin with, a huge question mark will loom as to the relevance of the story to anything at all. It’s not something I would recommend, even for it’s noteworthy number of wins at international film festivals.

A Simple Haul Gets Complicated

Vlada is a solitary truck driver in war torn Kosovo of 1999. Because jobs are few and far between, he happily accepts an assignment to haul locked and hidden cargo to Belgrade. Once you make a decision, Vlada figures, things get easier as you go along. He is so wrong in this assumption. In the next 24 hours Vlada will experience repeated shocks as the cruelties of war are impressed upon him even by seemingly innocuous things such as a lighter, pen, hitchiker and marble.

Vlada’s encounters reveal how easy it is for the average person to get entangled in something sinister and beyond their comprehension. It is an intriguing yet somber reflection on war and the scars it inflicts on people. Leon Lucev won awards for his stoic and unassuming portrayal of Vlada. The film is a bit predictable. Critically acclaimed at Cannes and seen at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.

Bleak yet involving

The Kosovo War of the late 1990s was one of the final acts of the break-up of what was once Yugoslavia. In ‘The Load’ a truck driver is assigned to transport a mysterious cargo to Belgrade, across a country under NATO bombardment. But anyone hoping for shots of blood ‘n’ guts will have to look elsewhere, as this film is less concerned with the mechanics of the conflict – even if it is the work’s raison d’être – than it is with showing how the citizens of a country at war adjust and carry on, absorbing the conflict into their everyday lives.

Lead actor Leon Lucev (IMDb will not allow the correct spelling of his surname!) is a tough-looking bloke but as Vlada the trucker he delivers a performance that is a far cry from what the viewer may have expected to be the usual tough-guy role. Vlada is a taciturn man but not unfriendly: he attempts conversation with a teenage hitchiker and has to make all the running when talking to his son. Perhaps his quietness arises from disappointment with his life: he has to take the trucking job after being made redundant from his previous employment. His wife is ill and those NATO bombs are getting closer…

As Vlada’s journey continues we get some nice shots of wintry, bleakly attractive countryside. Towards the end we see what Vlada has been transporting and a hint at actions he may take as a result. Also at the end of the film the significance of a stolen lighter is explained in an affecting story.

This is not a fast-moving film and will certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed it.

Seen at the 2018 London Film Festival.