Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, trying to make his way in a country scarred by the war. He knows that once the job is over, he will need to return home and face the consequences of his actions.... (Full plot summary below)
Enjoy FREE movies and series with your Prime (USA) subscription or when you start a 30-day free trial!
Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, trying to make his way in a country scarred by the war. He knows that once the job is over, he will need to return home and face the consequences of his actions.
Leave your thoughts about The Load.
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleThe overtly graphic isn’t Glavonic’s visual style, but rather a cold, more powerful image seepage — what a man’s physicality says about complicity, and what a shot of the muddied ground near a hosed-down truck says about what war does to the ground, a land and the soul. |
| The New York TimesGlenn KennyThe gray skies under which Glavonic shoots, the unhurried takes in which he chronicles the drive, they put us with Vlada in an unmitigated way, the better to compel viewers to ask themselves what they would do in his position. |
| VarietyJessica KiangIt requires a degree of commitment on the part of the viewer to join the sparsely placed dots of Glavonić’s harshly intelligent and uncompromisingly spare story, especially when the picture they form is so harrowing. But the elements that frustrate can also devastate. |
| Slant MagazineJake ColeChromatically, The Load makes Saving Private Ryan look like The Band Wagon. Yet Glavonic still manages to convey the devastation and numbness that results from atrocity without resorting to exploitation. Trauma is approached obliquely, more a subliminal fact of life than a single psychological rupture to be confronted and mended. |
| The A.V. ClubLawrence GarciaAs intelligently crafted as the film is, Glavonić’s directorial strategies do end up limiting the film’s observational power. |
| TheWrapMichael NordineIt’s like we’re front-seat passengers, and though it induces much anxiety, “The Load” compels us to keep both eyes forward lest we miss whatever might happen next. |
| Screen DailySarah WardIf any colour represents the long-term impact of war, it’s the blend of beige and grey that fills The Load’s quietly powerful frames. |
| The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonThis well-intentioned meditation of the banality of evil packs a modest emotional punch, but it might have been more powerful if it had shown us a little less banality and a little more evil. |
| User ReviewINFEDnoXA deeply moving film, Ognjen Glavonić's debut finds poignance in quiet pockets of space. Glavonić's directing is slow and hypnotic, almost Bela Tarr-esque in places. His background in documentaries is readily apparent; he seems content to allow the camera to wander of its own accord, to drift between spaces of incredible beauty - a bleak and beige countryside, a bus on fire, a claustrophobic roadside motel stop. Its people shift in and out of frame, with occasional background characters coming to the fore for a short time, each with their own individual story, most to be relayed to the viewer silently and only in passing. It's a film about what it means to hold onto one's individual dignity in the face of extreme adversity. Glavonić regards these characters with a sort of reverence, offering us a glimpse into their quiet, often silent struggles, one that you can't help but watch. After a while, it becomes impossible to look away. |
