On Mount Trebević above Sarajevo, a cement monolith snakes through wooded terrain – an elevated channel emblazoned with colorful graffiti. Locals and tourists enjoy walking along the pocked pathway, but a pleasant stroll doesn’t come without risk – at given moments, humans sling down it at speeds of more than 80 miles an hour.
This is the luge and bobsleigh run built over four decades ago for the Winter Olympics, which were held in Sarajevo in 1984, a moment of glory for Yugoslavia before the country split apart and descended into civil war. Today, despite its crumbling condition, the concrete trough still attracts young Bosnian athletes chasing Olympic dreams.
Three of those young hopefuls – Mirza Nikolajev, Zlatan Jakić, and Hamza Pleho – and their coach, Senad Omanović, are featured in The Track, which held its world premiere Friday at the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, MO. The young men not only face all the physical demands of competing at an elite level, but constant impediments that have to do with lack of funding and disintegrating infrastructure.
Watch on Deadline
Introducing The Track, True/False Artistic Director Chloé Trayner noted, “This film completely stole the hearts of our programming team as soon as we watched it.” The documentary appeared to land similarly with the audience at the Missouri Theater; when the lights came up, they gave it a standing ovation.
The documentary project came about organically, Canadian director Ryan Sidhoo explained during a Q&A following the premiere. “I started traveling in the region and just the warmth of the people, the acceptance, I kind of felt like it was a second home,” he said. “I was like, wow, I like this place. So, I just kept going back.”
On one visit to Sarajevo, he took a hike along the old luge run. “They were prepping it, and they were telling me to get off the track,” he recalled. “I was confused over why people are telling me to get off. And then they explained to me they were using it, they were training on it, and then immediately the light went on in my head and the story just kind stuck with me. [I] just kind of nurtured the relationship with the coach [Senad]. And eight years later, we’re here.”
Sidhoo was joined at the Q&A by protagonist Mirza Nikolajev, who traveled from Bosnia-Herzegovina for the festival.
“It’s amazing really watching the past eight years of your life and just, it’s a bit tough for me to talk at the moment,” Nikolajev shared. “Very emotional seeing everything that’s happened, how we developed during our growing up.”
The track isn’t operational in winter. In summer, lugers can go down it on wheeled sleds, but that’s easier said than done. The film shows coach Senad repairing damage to the concrete, patching cracks and sweeping debris from the course – pinecones and pine needles from the surrounding trees that could prove a tremendous hazard for a sled zooming at a breakneck pace. As Senad notes in the film, he has coached numerous Olympic teams for Bosnia-Herzegovina but never earned a penny for his efforts because there’s no funding available.
Recognizing the financial hardship faced by coach and athletes in the film, the festival selected The Track as the recipient of its 2025 True Life Fund. A QR code was displayed on screen during the Q&A, allowing audience members to contribute; as Trayner, Sidhoo, and Nikolajev spoke on stage the donations began to mount, quickly reaching more than $10,000.
Asked how he would put the funds to use, Nikolajev said, “It’s going to help me a lot for the upcoming Olympic season. It’s going to help me focus more on my trainings on the track itself, on the sleds. I wouldn’t have to work this summer, basically. I would be all into luge and then eventually get on my second Olympics, qualify for it.”
As The Track shows, Nikolajev qualified for the Beijing Winter Games in 2022, and served as co-flag bearer for Bosnia-Herzegovina at the opening ceremonies. In a chance moment, he happened to wink at the camera during the televised ceremony, which created something of a sensation with Chinese viewers.
“With this charming wink, BiH Olympic athlete Mirza Nikolajev drew the attention of millions of Chinese people,” China’s Embassy in Bosnia-Herzegovina noted at the time, “and [he] climbed up the list of hot topics on the popular [social] network Weibo.”
That spontaneous meme provides a lighthearted moment in the documentary. But shadowing the film is the memory of war, which killed an estimated 100,000 people in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. Most of the dead were Bosnian Muslims, some slaughtered in horrifying acts of ethnic cleansing committed by Serbian-aligned forces. In the midst of fighting, Sarajevo’s luge track became a defensive barrier, with the city’s protectors poking holes through the concrete for gunsights.
“When you make a film, you want it to have a larger message,” Sidhoo commented. “I think the post-war history of Bosnia is still — it’s overlooked but incredibly relevant. I think that if you look at what’s going on in the world today, you can kind of look to Bosnia and look at Mirza and Zlatan and Hamza, and these kids interact with the war every single day, even though the war finished 30 years ago… You just have to be in Sarajevo and see the effect of the extreme ‘othering’ to maybe make that point or weave that in about these lingering consequences of conflict.”
The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are set to take place in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, 42 years after those storied Games of Sarajevo.
At the Q&A, Nikolajev praised director Ryan Sidhoo. Referring to the filming process, he said Sidhoo “made it feel like he wasn’t even there recording it. I’m very glad that he did that, so now we can cherish the memory. We can have it always, I can show it to my friends and my future kids, potentially. It’s such a great thing to have.”
The post In ‘The Track’ Young Lugers Pursue Olympic Dreams On A Course Pocked With Scars Of War – True/False Film Fest appeared first on Deadline.
