An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker

Director: Danis Tanović

Cast: Nazif Mujic, Senada Alimanovic, Semsa Mujic, Sandra Mujic

Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Slovenia, 2013, 75',color

Bosnian, Romany with Turkish subtitles

 

Danis Tanović enlists a cast of non-professionals to reconstruct a harrowing personal ordeal that became a national scandal. An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker is a story of courage in the face of hardship and injustice. Struggling to make ends meet as a scrap-metal forager in the remote Roma community of Poljice, Nazif Maujic's routine becomes a desperate fight for survival when his partner Senada suffers a miscarriage. Without medical insurance or the means to pay for a life-saving septicemia procedure, Senada and Nazif are denied admittance to the local hospital. So begins a hellish 10-day odyssey pitting the couple against social prejudice and a callous bureaucracy, exposing the institutional discrimination faced by Bosnia-Herzegovina's Roma minority.