ZagrebDox 2024: Bottlemen (Flašaroši) | Review
In Bottlemen, Nemanja Vojinović shatters the illusion of simplified environmentalism by portraying the harsh reality of landfill workers in Vinča, Serbia, where societal neglect meets profitable exploitation.
Values such as recycling, waste separation and conscientious shopping have become pretty much incorporated into western thinking. And western thinking has for a long time (rightly or wrongly) been promoted as an ideal of advancement of the human kind. Simplified environmentalism is an easy trap to fall into for an open-minded individual eager to take action to make the world a better place. The setting of Nemanja Vojinović’s latest feature Bottlemen is quick to dispel any such notions.
Vojinović takes us to Vinča – one of the largest landfills in Europe – located on the outskirts of the Serbian capital. This is an apocalyptic site that seagulls hauntingly blanket and where huge garbage trucks dispose of collected waste seemingly without rest. The site of this havoc is enough to convince every eager environmentalist that the moment to save planet Earth is indeed long, long gone.
However, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And the eponymous bottlemen gather at the landfill for their daily shift. In the piles of unwanted waste, they earn their daily living. And it’s not a bad living at all, despite the grim appearance. The collectors of discarded metal and plastic bottles could earn up to three average salaries working the dump. But the thought that circles the viewer’s mind is why would you…
Yani is the group leader, and our protagonist. Like the rest of the bottlemen he lives at the foot of the landfill. A shapeless voice orders him around over the phone and demands more scavenged material. Yani tries to get his team to work harder, but he is portrayed as a quiet, thoughtful person who avoids conflict. When the group is cohesive, they sit together drinking, playing strip poker and singing. But just like the heaps of garbage that surround them, there is something smouldering beneath the surface.
So if you thought that living and working a garbage site was bad enough, wait until you see it when the summer heat starts a fire. The thick smoke now slides threateningly down the heaps but the bottlemen carry on. Milling machines and foreboding fire are just another part of the everyday. That is, it was. Today Vinča is closed, and the people and families that took up existence there were moved into government housing around Serbia. The ever mounting piles of rubbish are now used to generate electricity. Profit, unsurprisingly, was what drove the government to force the bottlemen into livable conditions.
Vojinović keeps from weighing in on the matter either through editing or through title cards. His topic is the people who work hard and diligently in places that society prefers to pretend don’t exist – nor the dumps nor the people condemned to them. The director doesn’t even try to graze the questions about the preservation of the environment, energy from waste initiatives and social philosophies… Those are topics for the more fortunate. More fortunate and more oblivious, for sure.
Bottlemen is presented in the Regional Competition of ZagrebDox 2024. Produced by Marija Stojnić and Nemanja Vojinović himself, the film won the Best Documentary – Heart of Sarajevo Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival 2023 and the Premio dei Distribuzione at Festival dei Popoli 2023.
