A slow-cooked meat and vegetable stew is an esteemed speciality of Bosnian cuisine.

Archival footage explains how Bosnian miners prepared the traditional dish to eat together after the shift. Culinary history aside, this relevant metaphorical social drama unleashes Zlatko Burić as a vampire elf on the stage.

The doubting actor tries to lend a helping hand to a Bosnian refugee, Muslim Faruk Šego. The hapless playwright fled from Sarajevo to Graz during the Siege. After 12 years, strict Austrian authorities threaten to cancel his residency permit. The only way to escape deportation is to write and cook up something meaningful and tasty. The intellectual Faruk hasn’t produced any artistically relevant dishes for nine years.

With delicate humour and unfading optimism, we follow his sorrowful quest in the never-ending mazes of bureaucracy.

Edvinas Pukšta