Rule of Thumb

Ana and Monika are hell-bent on winning the hitchhiking competition from Sweden to the Serbian-Bulgarian border, nobody must be allowed to beat them. Thumbs out and the road trip can begin. On the stages of their journey, they encounter people who are not really coping with the Western European experience: a woman who, in the absence of a permanent residence, is living in her car; a man who wants to marry them both so he can come to Western Europe; and a dead, talking dog that nobody expected, as surprising as the man with the chopped off finger. Little by little, the road gets lost between adventure and nightmare, only the tarmac remains as hard as before and the wheat on the side of the road sways in the wind. 

With lightness and humour, Iva Brdar creates a dark, abysmal picture of Europe, in which cultural contrasts, lifestyles and ideas radically collide: ‹Europe› the place of longing (still), flickers on the horizon but increasingly fails to withstand the confrontation with reality. Yet Brdar’s characters remain combative, curious and open to what lies ahead. Whenever they encounter the supposedly foreign, they also find a piece of themselves in it and take it with them on the journey whose destination becomes increasingly blurred.