Billed as an “ecological western”, Nemanja Vojinovic’s Bottlemen is an immersive documentary about the invisible army of low-wage workers who scrabble to make a living from a vast, toxic trash dump in Serbia. The subject matter may sound almost wilfully grim but it also proves unexpectedly lyrical and strikingly beautiful. On some level, this film is also a requiem for a lost way of life, though not one that many viewers will want to sentimentalise. World premiering in Sarajevo this week, Vojinovic’s second feature project is firmly pitched at niche audiences, but it should enjoy healthy festival play thanks to its high-calibre visuals and empathetic insights into an extraordinary working environment.
The breathtaking visual backdrop of Bottlemen is the Vinca landfill, a mountain of trash and rubble located on an ancient Neolithic settlement in the suburbs of Belgrade. Founded in the early 1970s, this vast man-made hellscape has since grown into Europe’s biggest rubbish dump and an ecological disaster area, ravaged by regular wildfires that send choking clouds of smog into the city. Trucks bring thousands of tons of garbage here every day, with teams of manual workers crowding around each new shipment to pick out items for recycling. Meanwhile, huge swarms of gulls swirl around them, scavenging for scraps of food.
Shooting across several seasons, Vojinovic frames this post-apocalyptic setting with a painterly eye, capturing its alien majesty and unexpected visual poetry. As shredded ribbons of plastic flutter in the summer breeze, the site resembles some kind of surreal sci-fi art installation. When winter snows fall, this towering inferno of stinking waste becomes a man-made alpine wonderland. The whirling masses of gulls also serve as a strong visual motif in Bottlemen, often filling the entire screen with their shrieks and swoops, inevitably invoking Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) in places. There is horror here, but otherworldly beauty too.
Though mostly an observational portrait of a unique location, Bottlemen also has a tender human subtext. The focus of its loose narrative thread is Yani “Yanika” Boc, a taciturn former boxer who now works as a “bottleman” at the Vinca landfill. We first meet him as reluctant team leader to a gang tasked with scrabbling for plastic bottles to recycle and crush into giant processed cubes. But Yanika is clearly having serious doubts about this soul-draining job as relations turn sour with his increasingly hostile co-workers and harsh, demanding, remote bosses. He is also quietly struggling with more personal issues, including an ailing father and far-away children he rarely sees.
Bottlemen is light on historical context, political hinterland or character depth. Aside from a few skimpy on-screen captions, viewers learn very little of the Vinca landfill site’s past, present or future, and equally scant details about Yanika’s life. Sometimes this absence feels frustrating, reducing the film to a purely aesthetic, almost abstract artwork for long sections. That said, there are slow-burn emotional shadings and grace notes buried under these mountains of smouldering garbage.
In its later stages, Bottlemen emerges as a kind of bittersweet memorial. Vojinovic began shooting just as the Vinca landfill was entering a major transition phase. Long-in-gestation plans to reclaim, stabilise and modernise this unsanitary eyesore with a green-belt perimeter and a giant waste-energy power plant finally led to the closure of the old site in 2021. This film captures the end of an era, drawing elegiac echoes between the demise of Yanika’s former profession and more personal changes in his life. Besides Igor Marovic’s ravishing cinematography and frequently stunning visual choices, music is also a strong stylistic element, from wistful ambient soundscapes to boisterous blasts of turbo-folk, the Balkan region’s signature brand of cheerfully garish dance-pop.
Director, screenwriter: Nemanja Vojinovic
Producers: Marija Stojnic, Nemanja Vojinovic
Cinematography: Igor Marovic, Nemanja Vojinovic
Editing: Dragan Von Petrovic
Sound design: Bostjan Kacicnik
Music: Predrag Adamovic
Production companies: RT Dobre Nade (Serbia), Set Sail Films (Serbia), Urgh! (Slovenia)
World sales: Taskovski, London
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Documentary competition)
In Serbian
84 minutes
