Karpotrotter is a road movie about place, time, and memory, as well as an homage to filmmaker Karpo Godina, whose work flourished during the Black Wave of Yugoslav filmmaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Contemporary filmmaker Matjaz Ivanisin retraces the footsteps, 40 years later, of his compatriot’s road trip through small villages in the rural countryside. Constructed from Godina’s 8mm footage from this journey, Ivanisin interlaces this material with landscape footage from his current road trip and contemporary interviews of the citizenry who recall Godina’s visit decades earlier; period folkloric music augments the soundtrack. The filmmaker structures his film in five sections that articulate the local character of different villages. Richly multi-layered in both temporal and spatial terms, the filmmaker constructs a poignant meditation about the local village culture and inhabitants of this rural region of the former Yugoslavia.

Boris Robič is, as we say, an ordinary kind of bloke. One evening, however, someone tries to shoot him. The investigations reveal nothing. No enemies, no suspects. You could say that Boris is the last person anyone would want to kill. After the police close the investigation, Boris decides to make his own inquiries. As he searches for the suspect, we see the tragi-comedy unfold of a man who discovers that a lot more people hate him than he ever realized and that the way he sees his own life was an illusion.

1993. A passenger train from Belgrade to Bar is stopped by paramilitary forces in an ethnic cleansing operation. As they haul off innocent civilians, only one man dares to stand up to them. This is the true story of a man who could not remain silent.

Marija, Boko, Irena and other neighbours have a picnic in front of their apartment building. Suddenly a jet-fighter flies overhead. Later Peter, who flew this plane and is the son of Irena and Boko, formerly an officer in the Yugoslav Peoples Army, also arrives. Four years later the war for Slovenia breaks out and Yugoslavia is falling apart. Marjan and Bokos families, which used to be on friendly terms, are now inimical. Marjan wants to shoot the soldiers of the Yugoslav Army with an air gun, and Boko does not know what to do. Things get worse, Peter calls from the airport and an air-raid alarm forces them to seek refuge in a bomb shelter. But Marjan does not want Irena and Boko there, as they are supposed to be enemies of Serbia. Someone burns the Yugoslav flag and everyone has to run outside, while jet fighters are already flying over the apartment buildings.