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IDFA 2007

Last Bus Stop

Viimeinen pysäkki
Kai Salminen, Zsuzsa Böszörményi
Finland, Hungary
2007
52 min
World Premiere
Festival history
Imagine a village somewhere deep in Eastern Europe. For more than a century, its nationality has changed in a season-like cadenza: first it belonged to the Hapsburg Empire, then to Czechoslovakia, next to Hungary, then to the Soviet Union. In recent years, things have grown even more complex. At the end of World War II, the Russians established a border that divided the village of Szelmenc (population 1,100) over two separate countries. Families on one side live in Slovakia, which is now a member of the European Union. On the other side, their relatives suffer from the unstable political and economic circumstances in Ukraine. One solution would be to build a border-crossing, to reunite families after 60 years and to generate some economic structure. The film starts with the trip that the mayors of Little Szelmenc and Great Szelmenc made to Washington in 2004, where they urged the necessity of constructing a border-crossing at the congressional Human Rights Caucus. Two years later, it was built - but who is actually benefiting from it?
Credits
Screening copy
    Finnish Film Foundation
    Finnish Film Foundation
World Sales
    Epidem
    Epidem
Involved TV Channel
    YLE
    YLE