Picnic

Ismir is nervous. He has set off from Sarajevo to visit his father who is serving a sentence at a semi-open prison. A delay means that father and son now only have twenty minutes for their important encounter. It is hard to start a conversation. The pair sits next to each other awkwardly, trying to find the right words. They talk about what is new, about how school is going, and the boy listens to the war stories he has heard hundreds of times before from his Dad. None of this brings the pair any closer. But once they stop talking, they get up and start boxing each other. It is just for fun, really and perhaps for a bit of training. As they box, something begins to grow between father and son. And then, Ismir, who is much smaller than his strong father, succeeds in scoring a direct hit, one that really packs a punch and hurts for quite a while. And all at once, the ice is finally broken.