Anyone who’s been stuck behind a left-hand drive lorry lumbering along the A14 will recognise the letters TIR at road-level on the back — Transports Internationaux Routiers. It’s the world our hero Branko (Branko Zavrsan) inhabits. And, for the entire hour and a half running time, so do we, living in and around his TIR truck. It’s now Branko’s home as he transports potatoes, apples and pigs across Europe while his real home life back in Croatia is on hold, restricted to long late-night phone conversations with his unseen wife Isa (Lucka Pockaj). Branko earns four times what he did in his former career as a schoolteacher. Cut short due to redundancy, he and Isa (still a teacher) need the extra money to keep the family afloat, with a new grandson and a son asking for help buying a flat.
That’s the set-up and as the endless miles roll by with the European scenery — often spectacular, more often industrial — merely glimpsed, we concentrate on the unfolding psychodrama of Branko and his partner Maki’s personal lives. They drive and cook at the side of the truck, and wash adapting water containers for a shower in a lay-by. The hours are punishing but tightly controlled. Over-tiredness at the wheel, and the restrictions to prevent that happening, are a constant lurking danger. Branko’s driving for 40 minutes over the specified four hours could mean he face a 1000-euro fine. By this time we know the effects that would have on his life, and the great strength of TIR is that drama emerges from what seem at the time like incidental details.
Drama but not melodrama, this road movie is full of tensions threatening to develop into crises, turning points which would take TIR in a different direction. The family friend Goran for example, crops up innocently enough in one phone call concerning Isa’s evening. But then crops up again in Branko’s absence to help fix Isa’s car. “And what else?” asks Branko, his eyes on the road and the glowing sat-nav. The question is unanswered as the lights of yet another service station loom.
Branko may not know exactly where he’s going, but TIR does.
Chaos in the dispatching office causes Branko to be in the wrong country at the wrong time. Italian drivers blockade the truck, striking for better conditions. Then, with Maki’s making a crazed dash for freedom, Branko has to take over the consignment of pigs, trapped and wild-eyed in their narrow pens – the nearest TIR comes to an overtly symbolic moment. All provide opportunities for a third-act resolution of the story. But these are just moments, which pass like accidents on the other carriageway as Branko gets back on the road again, staring into the unforeseeable future.
“I doubt if you’ll enjoy it” said the CFF man introducing the first screening of TIR. True, as with any long motorway journey there are longueurs. However, this is to underestimate the skill with which Alberto Fasulo constructs the film, and how Zavrsan creates a character out of so many seemingly mundane moments. Branko may not know exactly where he’s going, but TIR does.
TIR screens on 5th Sept at 3.15pm at the Cambridge Film Festival.
httpvh://youtu.be/eRYSGum1XNU