Borderline Lovers

This film is amazing. It's one of those dark, depressing, rip-out-your-hair frustrating, satirical, hilarious, touching, heartwarming, jump-around-screaming-with-happiness movies that no place can make a fraction as well as the former Yugoslavia.

Two of the best and funniest reviews

"Sarajevo-native Miroslav Mandic's superb, unsettling documentary, postwar rancor is evident in the hard stares directed at the three inter-ethnic couples. "Don't worry, your mother-in-law is not going to poison you," teases a young Bosnian as her Serbian husband tastes an unfamiliar dish. Deft camera work, rhythmic editing and Sasa Losic's versatile score (including faux Muzak) create a remarkable rapport with these brave lovers, if not their wary parents."

"In the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars, three young couples struggle against prejudice and lingering hatred to create lives together. "Borderline Lovers" is a sharply observed study of mixed marriage today between Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Director Miroslav Mandic picks ordinary working folk from Sarajevo, Mostar and Dubrovnik to show how love is sewing the torn social fabric back together. A Catholic woman from Croatian Dubrovnik and her Orthodox boyfriend from Montenegro, a Bosnian Croat biker and his Bosnian Muslim girlfriend, and a traveling salesman and his wife are likeable and often funny as they try to gently persuade their families that love conquers all. The parents fear a repeat of what happened during the war, when couples from different ethnic backgrounds often broke up. The arrival of grandchildren does much to patch up old wounds. Casual asides are most revealing, like the young men at a body-building gym who are able to joke about having shot at each other during the war."

The characters

Anesa (Bosniak) & Dragan (Croat)
According to their national backgrounds, Anesa lives in the Eastern part of Mostar and Dragan in the Western. They both are into motorbikes, tattoos and having fun. But their parents…


Ozrenka (Croat) & Marko (Montenegrin Serb)
How could a Croatian woman form Dubrovnik possibly have met a Montenegrian whose compatriots were attacking her city not long ago? Yet, they have been meeting each other on the boarder between two countries the last three years.



Adila (Bosniak) & Velibor (Bosnian Serb)
A couple form Sarajevo’s Dobrinja neighbourhood. His father was in the Serbian Army, her family under siege on the other side. Not one member of either family attended their wedding. But, their struggle is now different – how to make a living.