For almost fifty years, the country of Yugoslavia was important in global geopolitics. Zastava, a company founded in the 1850s as a weapons manufacturer, pivoted and began producing vehicles a century later. Fiat, the Italian manufacturer from Turin, licensed its designs to the Yugoslav industry. Zastava would sell models of the Fiat cars in Yugoslavia, which became popular for the designs and the local modifications. However, in the 1980s, they released the Jugo (Yugo), a new offering for the Eastern European markets comprising a compact car with pieces produced in multiple territories, such as Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia. Selling more than two hundred thousand units by the end of the decade, the Yugo was a hit in Europe, and it was still easy to find on the roads of the continent. Due to the success in the Eastern Europe, an American importer released the car in the United States, which turned out to be a failure. In Yugo Goes to America (Yugo ide u Ameriku), the documentary by Filip Grujic & Aleksa Borković, we follow a road trip from New York to Los Angeles in a 1980s Yugo.
The documentary is a road movie about best friends from Belgrade, Serbia, driving across the American territory in a symbol of a foregone era. In this sense, the film is almost a retrospective of the car trajectory, considering the failed release in the United States, and regarding its cult car status almost four decades later. We follow the usual structure of the travel films, which is too formulaic to be a travelogue, and too attached to its rules to explore beyond the Road film label. Truth be told, this subgenre features a narrative that obeys its formula. Therefore, in this genre, the characters usually follow a trajectory planned before the travel starts, separating the cities and activities, based mostly on interest and background story. Consequently, the strongest link in the film is the car’s backdrop, which assigns a historical relevance to the film. In its own sense, it is a time travel from the 1980s to the modern times.
Accordingly, there is a fascinating element in a Yugoslav car crossing through the roads of the United States in the 2020s. When people want to own the latest electric vehicle for hype or their environmental values, but they want the latest model. Nowadays, cars link to the social media, to the looks they want to embody, and an overall connection with the personal branding of oneself. Thus, Filip Grujic, Aleksa Borković, and Aleksandar Blažić embark on a trip to the past throughout the roads that connect New York to California, the two most crucial states in the United States, although located on opposite coasts. The most compelling aspect of their trip is the connection of the individuals, friends from Serbia, who are driving through the American roads in a relic. The Yugo, the car, represents two symbolic failures: Yugoslavia as a country and the commercial release of the model in the United States. Still, the friendship between Filip, Aleksa, and Aleksandar represents a notion broader than the successes of the country and the car brand, but the friendship of boys who grew up together, and crossed America as men. It is a portrayal of the friendship of boys who overcome the barriers of continents and borders.
Finally, although the film, as a road trip, has its limitations due to the structure, there is an interesting subtext about our understanding of a product’s failure solely because it did not go well in the United States. Even if it was one of the best-selling products in Yugoslavia, the mixed results in the land of capitalism harmed the car’s reputation forever, considered a joke, but saved by its cult reputation. There is a tendency and commercial pressure to make anything popular in the United States before addressing the success in its local territory and the neighboring nations. Yugo Goes to America (Yugo ide u Ameriku) is a time capsule to the 1980s, back when Yugoslavia existed, and its industry exported its compact and popular model of car, borrowed from the Fiat designs. Despite the fascinating subtext, the film never surpasses the limitations of the subgenre, which provides little space for expansion, as is the case in the film by Filip Grujic and Aleksa Borković.
Yugo Goes to America (Yugo ide u Ameriku) recently played at the CPH:DOX film festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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