Goran lives in present day Bosnia. The country, which experienced serious and violent conflicts in the nineties, has not recovered. The fields are loaded with mines and cannot be farmed and the economy is greatly in jeopardy. Goran, himself, is luckier than most, having a house left to him by his parents. His roommate, however, has lost both arms to the land mines and depends on Goran for many things. Both of them, obviously depressed, drink heavily every evening at a friend's saloon. A tragedy leaves Goran in a quandary. He decides to sell his parent's home and use the money to travel somewhere off in the horizon. By chance, he invests some funds in a roving diner and goes about the countryside, setting up his little restaurant. Unusually, though, Goran has written a sign above the establishment, a sign almost beyond belief. Everything Goran sells is free. This confuses and, subsequently, delights everyone, including a most attractive young lady in a lovely village. Will contentment finally rain down on dear Goran? Despite some comic moments, this fine film is not a comedy but a mixture of fleeting happiness and heartache. Bosnia is still a place of sorrow and, as this movie shows, searching desperately for an improvement in circumstance. Even so, the human spirit is hard to trample down completely. All of the actors in the film deliver their parts very nicely and the locale is exotic and eye-opening to the armchair traveler. The movie has a respectable look and direction to it, too, which was most likely hard to do, given the budget restraints. If you like to wander away from standard Hollywood fare, on occasion, try to locate this foreign film at the usual video outlets. Although it may leave one a bit moist around the eyes, it is a compelling story. Moreover, it may give the viewer insight into an area of the world that still needs help from its neighbors on planet earth.
