Krško, a small industrial town near the southern Slovenian border with Croatia. The only Slovene nuclear power plant is based at the outskirts of the city.
Ludvik, a former national speedway champion, is a bitter widower, who transports illegal immigrants every night from the Croatian to the Italian border with his van. His boss sends to him the young and inexperienced Rudi to serve as his assistant.
On the first drive Ludvik challenges Rudi a few times; a beautiful Macedonian girl is only one of their victims. Rudi experiences a moral dilemma. After returning home to Krško, they get drunk together and Ludvik accepts Rudi as one of his own. They go to races together and almost every night transport immigrants from all over the world past the nuclear plant. Rudi quickly gets rid of his moral reservations; he becomes tough and relentless.
The hope for better future, which Europe represents to the refugees, often turns into serious human drama through the depiction of the miserable existence of their "guides"…
(dialogue from the film):
LUDVIK: Half of them end up like spare parts anyway.
RUDI: What spare parts?!
LUDVIK: Like spare parts. On the Italian side they drug them, they take out everything: heart, kidney, liver. Anything you can transplant. One kidney is 15000 Euros.
RUDI: Are you fucking with me?
LUDVIK: We are tourist guides in comparison with the other side.
Statement of the Director
Passports and visas are a formality to those who have them. But the person who does not, is like a Martian, stranded on a hostile planet. In the year 2000, 36.000 illegal immigrants have been captured in Slovenia: Africans, Kurds, Albanians, Chinese, Pakistanis, Macedonians… If only a quarter has been captured, we get to the number of 150.000. Therefore, 400 illegal emigrants pass Slovenia every day on their journey to »Europe«. A lot of money for the smugglers of human souls and a lot of human fates.
Krško is a small town by the Croatian border, known for its nuclear plant, cellulose industry and speedway races.
Spare Parts is a film about two smugglers from Krško and many illegal immigrants.
