Cult following: From Sarajevo, with love

Bosnian taxi drivers honour film icon Robert De Niro

Hundreds of taxi drivers around Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, have stuck posters of Robert De Niro on their vehicles in tribute to the actor, who opened the city’s film festival, with a screening of Taxi Driver.

In the movie – which has been restored digitally for its 40th anniversary – De Niro plays a lonely and depressed former US Marine living on his own in New York. He becomes a taxi driver to cope with his chronic insomnia.

“Many of our colleagues became taxi drivers after retiring from the Bosnian army and in a sign of gratitude and compassion with the main character, we have decided to stage Robert a warm welcome in this way,” Reuters quoted Hasib Losic of the Sarajevo Taxi Association as saying.

Some 300 taxi drivers have jumped the bandwagon, most depicting him with his hair shaved into a mohawk, onto their windscreens. More of them are expected follow the suit during the nine-day event.

The Sarajevo Film Festival – founded as an act of defiance during the Bosnian war, towards the end of the 1992-95 siege – is showing 222 films from 61 countries to an audience of about 100,000 this year. It has also honoured De Niro with a lifetime achievement award on its opening night on Friday.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 15^th, 2016.

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