Belgrade, Serbia

You could say that Ibarska highway is kind of Serbia’s backbone – a road that connects Belgrade to Kosovo and other important places in the south and west. It is not the best road, and certainly not the only option if you want to travel south, but it is the cheapest one thanks to the high prices of E-75. “Ibarska magistrala” is famous for terrible and dangerous driving conditions as well as terrible and dangerous drivers, but also for many kafanas and restaurants, shady motels and various other interesting forms of life alongside. So it’s no wonder someone finally made a film about it. Here’s what the author, Marko Popovic has to say about the Ibar highway on his site:

At the beginning there is a myth – an old graveyard was dug over to build a road and ever since people are frequently dying in car accidents on that road. The road is the Ibarska Highway, a route that connects the north to the south of Serbia. With its histories and myths, political assassinations, fatal waitresses in restaurants where only truck drivers dare to go, provincial intellectuals, lovers’ motels, prostitutes, local singers, auto-scraps’ owners, newly self-discovered believers, tycoons, unemployed gamblers, poor neighborhoods, big dreams and lost perspectives, the Ibarska Highway is a grotesque, funny, sad, sober, true picture of Serbia today. Like the unsettled ghosts of the old graveyard took over the whole route, all the people, and all the country. The road-movie along the Ibarska Highway is a journey to the inner worlds of so-called “small people” and a nation in trasition.

And here’s the longer version of the trailer, I have to say it looks very promising, even to a driver who had driven this road hundreds of times:

Thanks to Media Serbia for the link to the documentary.

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