Yugo's 10,000km American Adventure Becomes Sarajevo Film Festival Feature

A group of young Serbians embarked on an epic 10,000-kilometer road trip across the United States in a Yugo, a car once maligned in America but now experiencing a cult revival. Their adventure has been captured in the documentary film "Yugo Goes to America," directed by Filip Grujić and Aleksa Borković.

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We hope the audience in Sarajevo will take a ride with us in the Yugo. I believe Sarajevo also has a special relationship with the Yugo, like other places.

The film showcases the Yugo's unlikely journey from a symbol of Yugoslav industry and a car famously declared "the worst car ever" in the U.S. to an unexpected rock star status. The filmmakers' journey retraced a path from New York to Los Angeles, highlighting the car's enduring, albeit niche, appeal.

"We hope the audience in Sarajevo will take a ride with us in the Yugo. I believe Sarajevo also has a special relationship with the Yugo, like other places," said Grujić, expressing anticipation for the film's screening at the Sarajevo Film Festival. He explained the film's concept stemmed from nostalgic feelings and a desire to offer something "that goes so slowly" to a "too fast American society."

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It is a car that our grandparents fought for, that my parents drove, in which I was born. I was carried out of the maternity ward in a red Yugo.

Grujić shared personal connections to the car, noting it was the vehicle his grandparents struggled to afford and the one his parents drove. "I was carried out of the maternity ward in a red Yugo," he recalled. The film touches on how the Yugo, like many things, eventually fell apart, but its journey across America has given it a new lease on life, celebrated as a quirky icon in a hyper-capitalist country.

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It was very convenient to make fun of something that comes from a socialist country in that extremely capitalist country. The Yugo is received there today as some kind of rock star.