CEMENT

In a small town in Serbia, fate is a cement factory.

Before the end of socialism in Yugoslavia, just about everyone in Beocin worked at the local cement plant. The word unemployment was an unknown; people lived comfortably, with no ethnic or religious barriers between them.

Times have changed. The factory was privatized and bought up by a French company which cut many jobs. The former workers try to sustain themselves by all possible means. And so taxi drivers spout lacking costumers to take anywhere.

The only light in the darkness of creeping poverty is the Cement Box Club. Here we meet Darko, a 14-year-old boxing talent. Thanks to his brutal daily training he is Serbia-Montenegro's youth boxing champion. Darko has made his mind to become somebody, a more than ambitious goal in Beocin.

Miško is Darko's coach. To support his family, he works as a seasonal worker at the cement factory. His greatest wish is that his sons Roki and Ervin may follow his footsteps and become boxing stars.

Cement is the authentic portrait of a community that, though plunged into insecurity, never looses its sense of humour.