The Way Steel Was Tempered

People of different nationalities from Central Europe attempting to reach the West by crossing the controls and “European” rules.

The TV series is about a couple of guys, one good and naive, the other a liar and a manipulator, trying to make a living the best way they can. Along the way they meet a guy who eats glass, metal and plates, a couple of strippers, and a lot of ordinary people. Žilnik's dry and realistic approach is filled with humour and documentary parts with some real peasants and working-class people. The original three-part miniseries lasting 220 minutes is lost, only the 102 minute long restored series turned into a film is available.

A carnival is in town. Workers start to build the stalls and tents. Players practice their act. Roma, peasants and grifters put up their own boots. After they pay taxes to local officials, they get a muddy ground for their stalls.

The aged rocker Igor works as a journalist and DJ at the "Radio Student" in Ljubljana. He notices that the janitor Miha works for the police, tapping the walls and observing the journalists who are critical of the regime. After a clash with his editor, Igor decides to leave for Greece by his old bike DKW from 1938, via Bosnia and Serbia. Young Rahela joins him on the trip. Traveling through Yugoslavia, Igor becomes involved in unexpected turmoil: Milosevic's "antibureaucratic revolution" starts in Serbia and Vojvodina.

The first film in what would ultimately become Zilnik’s famed Kenedi trilogy follows street hustler Kenedi Hasani and his friend as they roam the streets of Serbia seeking Kenedi’s parents. Kenedi Goes Back Home is Zilnik’s account of the Roma people who were forced to flee from the war in the Balkans to Germany in the 1990s and who, ten years later, are forced against their will to return to Serbia. Zilnik shows the immigrants' lives in relation to the prevailing ideology shaped today by the borders between rich and poor and by the often-racist selection process that determines who will be accepted into Western Europe. In presenting the dilemmas and identifying the crises these people face, he appeals for a solution.

In the center of this docudrama are the events and tensions of the shooting of a feature film about Belgrade in the future. The director sets up unrealistic requirements to the producer, who breaks the law by overstepping the budget. During a court trial where the crew members are at the witness stand, we follow up the drama of how a film is made.

A frustrated and unemployed architect experiences flashbacks of his youth and 1968 protests while the life passes by. Unable to adapt and to accept the reality, he’s constantly getting into conflicts with the people around him.

Inspired by Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", three men and a girl named Jugoslava decide to wake up the conscience within the working class and peasants. Faced with the primitivism and a lack of morale, their revolution fails and the girl is the one to be sacrificed as a witness of their unsuccessful attempt.

After decades of work in Italy and Germany, Giuseppe is retired and returns to his family home in Istria. He is lonely and his mother advises him to get married. She hands him over his father’s uniform from the Austro-Hungarian army. Giuseppe sets off on a quest to find a wife in the “transitional East” hoping to be warmly welcomed. The road takes him to Budapest, Montenegro, Vojvodina. His plan is not so easily realised...

SFRJ is officially a place where everyone have a job and a house. The story follows hard labored workers who can't find a job, who bathe in public bathrooms and sleep in homeless centers.

A multinational company owned by Mrs Judit Angst is facing financial difficulties: she decides to hire a group of young anarchists to fake her "kidnapping". After a couple of weeks spent in confinement she will be able to justify the downfall of her company before the people and at the same time to gain the status of the opponent to the destruction and chaos.

A Norwegian TV-worker tries to prevent her son, which she has with her former husband, a Serb now living in Jugoslavia, to become a soldier in the starting civil war.

A trans couple from 1990s Belgrade beholds their profession as a pacifistic mission, curbing the urges of rapists, gamblers and horny young men during turbulent periods in war-torn country.

A mixture of documentary and fiction examines the new god of Capitalism offered to the Serbs with the ending of state socialism. We look at a number of strikes in Belgrade during the late 2000s and these introduce us to several characters playing themselves. Employees dressed in American football helmets and pads square up with employers' heavies in their bullet-proof vests, resulting in explosive situations. A visit from the Russian tycoon's representative and vice president Joe Biden's arrival further complicates the proceedings.

Belgrade in 2041 is a deserted city that looks like a dump yard. A few old men try to bring up a group of young girls in the old, traditional way of their Yugoslav ancestors.

"Fitzgerald" is Jovica's nickname among his friends. One day Jovica, a film projectionist from the childhood of Zilnik, an old jazz pianist and one of the actors from The Way Steel Was Tempered, hear of Ella Fitzgerald's unexpected death. Jovica is desperate; he plays the piano all night long and cries. His wife threatens him saying that she will throw him out of the house unless he gets rid of the piano.