From the sky, the concrete pipe that runs through Sarajevo that gives Ryan Sidhoo’s “The Track” its title looks as if it’s clearing a path, a white tube amidst a verdant green forest that looks pristine from above, but covered in graffiti and studded with cracks and potholes upon closer inspection. Senad, who was part of the national team that competed at home in luge during the 1984 Winter Olympics, can see the decay, but chooses to take the longer view as a coach these days for the handful of kids intrigued by the track, which would be too costly to destroy, but also impractical for a country still reeling from the war during the 1990s to properly maintain, leaving it up to him and those who train under him to repair if they want to practice.
“The Track” plays out a bit like a real-life “Cool Runnings” when competitive luge isn’t a sport one associates with Sarajevo, but then again that’s just one misconception of the country that Sidhoo would like to clear up as the generation born after the war still grapples with the consequences but is largely free of a feeling of defeat that has remained for those any older. The film inspires quite easily, though it involves a slightly awkward set-up as it comes to focus on three teenagers who spend their free time at the track with varying aspirations of seriously competing in the sport. There is never the sense that Zlatan, who is introduced reading Harry Potter by the side of the track, is especially eager to actually participate in the sport, making him feel slightly shoehorned into the film alongside the more athletically engaged Mirza and Hamza. However, the three all share uncertainty about their future, having to find personal motivation when there doesn’t seem to be much expected of them by anyone else given the nation’s painful past.
Knowing the feeling of being part of something greater than himself from his time on the national team, Senad took it upon himself to start fixing the track, but his initiative is simultaneously admirable and distressing when paying out of pocket is indicative of the lack of resources around in general to stake a team with goals of international competition, full of travel costs and other expenses. He is able to get Zlatan, Mirza and Hamza to Canada for Junior Championships, but over time as finances tighten and Senad’s advancing age becomes an issue, the limits of what’s possible start to become obvious despite how clearly the trip halfway across the world broadens the teens’ horizons once they’re on the ground.
It’s to be expected that one of the teens will exclaim, “We don’t have much, but what we do have is perseverance,” and Sidhoo isn’t immune to indulging in dreamy montages of the teens in solitude, either to express their hardship or picking themselves up by the bootstraps, but while the outcome of all this at the 2022 Winter Games may be relatively predictable, the obstacles are what become most eye-opening. It’s telling that Mirza, the most committed to the sport, also appears to have the most laid-back situation at home, as Hamza has to contend with protecting then women in his family when domestic abuse has been an issue and Zlatan, who has both an interest and a gift for engineering, struggles with the anxiety of being unable to find a place locally for his talent and having to consider moving abroad. None of the three are willing to stand pat, yet Sidhoo gracefully illustrates how Bosnia remains at a standstill decades after the fighting officially ceased when the young have difficulty seeing a future for themselves. With the presence of the camera alone, it feels as if someone’s invested in what happens to the three young men when it might not seem that way to them and as a result becomes unusually perceptive to their growing confidence and after “The Track” opens with what appears to be a closed thoroughfare, a world of possibilities awaits.
“The Track” will screen at the San Francisco Film Festival on April 23rd at 8:30 pm at the Marina Theatre.