When Vancouver filmmaker Ryan Sidhoo first travelled to the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, little did he know that he would return with a truly inspiring coming-of-age documentary, shot through the eyes of the country's young luge team.

As the film plays at VIFF 2025, Ryan spoke to FILMHOUNDS about finding hope in generational trauma, discovering the beauty of Bosnian culture, and being told to get off a luge track that was not quite as abandoned as it seemed.

This is a fascinating peek behind the curtain of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. How did a Vancouver boy with no connection to the former Yugoslavia find his way into this world?

It's funny, as any of my old friends would have said: “Of course Ryan made this movie”. I love history, I love sports, and I love film. Mixed in with that, I've developed a real love fair affair with Southeast Europe. I've been travelling there in my free time for the past 15 years and I think it's because in my early twenties I was searching for a sense of community or purpose. Some people find religion, some people find yoga…I found Yugoslavia, and in 2016 I was in Sarajevo visiting the [luge] track, which is the thing to do. For me, it was the equivalent of going to see the Berlin Wall; it was a chance to walk on a piece of Olympic history, which blew my mind. The first time I went to the region, it filled my heart with something indescribable. The people, the hospitality, the culture all hit me, as did the way the people were so familiar with each other. Growing up in Canada, that sort of feeling didn't exist, so I was really drawn to it. In Sarajevo, I'm now friends with my taxi driver – I've even met his family! In Vancouver, things are a little more arms length.

What inspired you to cover Bosnia's young luge team?

When I was walking on the track, I met the Slovakian luge team first, rather than the boys in the film. The Slovakian team had reached out to Senad, the [Bosnian] coach as they wanted to use the track due to its proximity and the fact that it's a great track, despite being in a ruined state. They told me to get off the track, but being the sports lover that I am I had a natural curiosity and I started talking to them. I thought it was the craziest thing that they were flying down this track at 110, 120km/h with no protective gear. The fact that anyone was using it in the first place really stuck with me. From there, I tracked Senad down and began to cultivate a relationship with him online. When he let me know that there was three young men coming up in his program, I decided to take a small crew out there and film some development material, which turned into the footage from the start of the movie at the start of the Winter Olympics in 2018. Before we even turned the camera on, I went to their houses to have coffee, chat with them, and meet their families. The boys were quite young at the time, around 15 or 16, and I had just come off a project following young athletes in the Toronto basketball scene, so I had some experience dealing with kids of a similar age in competitive sport. I'm proud to say that I co-authored the film with them and found out how they wanted their story to be told and brought it to life from there. We wanted to make something grounded in hope, as they were tired of the same themes about their country being recycled at that time.

The Track takes place over a five-year period, culminating in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. How did your own personal journey unfold during filming?

When I first went out there, I was encouraged to just go for it. I called in a few favours and we started shooting. The whole film was funded by grants and when that money started arriving in chunks, I was able to film a little bit, then go back and look at the footage with the editor Graham Withers. Each time we went back we'd have around five hours of footage, so all we could do was really spend time with that footage, which meant we really got to know the characters. We could easily watch all the footage and philosophize about the direction we were going in. As more grant money came in, I would go back [to Sarajevo], film a little more, rinse and repeat, and over time I figured out a roadmap of what was working with the footage and what wasn't. The slower approach really benefited the storytelling as it wasn't like other shoots where you have to rush. Instead, we were about to cut different scenes together, such as the luge scenes, and see how they worked with music or in a montage. I matured a lot as a filmmaker during the shoot and by the final third I had all the grant money and really knew what was working. I knew I had to just go and get the footage, rather than focusing on too much on the specific look of the film, and I'm glad I did it that way.

The audience finishes the film with a deep connection to your four main subjects. Was the film always going to be a character study of these three ambitious athletes and their coach?

At it's core, the film is a coming-of-age story about three friends in post-war Bosnia, dealing with the lingering consequences of conflict. It's certainly not a sports movie, in the traditional sense. You have Senad, who has seen the past, present, and uncertain future. He's seen the glory, has lived through the pain, and wants these boys to experience the sprit and good times of '84. Whatever happens on the sports idea doesn't matter all that much and it was never supposed to be a Netflix-style Drive to Survive type of film. Fortunately, the boys were not carbon copies of each other and are actually all quite different. Each of them represents a universal trajectory in the region. Not just in Bosnia, but in Serbia and Croatia, where there is an ongoing brain drain. Zlatan is incredibly smart and talented and the question around him was whether he would stay in Bosnia, because there's not a lot of opportunity following the war and the corruption that moved in. Hamza is dealing with the generational trauma passed down from the war and Mirza is this innocent dreamer who is optimistic almost to a fault. Will he make it or will he become jaded, because it's so hard to become an Olympic athlete. The uniqueness of each boy leant itself to deeper character study as the film went on.

The film explores generational trauma and lost nationality in the present day, through the historical context of the 1984 Olympic Games and the breakup of Yugoslavia. What was it like to interact with the cast, crew, and others on the ground on a daily basis, and what were their thoughts on the future?

That's a good question and it depends on who you ask. The current generation of kids has the opportunity to freelance and work in tech while living in Bosnia and having a pretty decent life. They choose to be there, but they're working remotely for foreign companies. Zlatan's sister does this and for many people like her the possibilities and opportunities are endless. If you're not in that industry, it's really tough. Progress is slow and it's exactly what the museum curator refers to it at the beginning of the movie when he mentions how something can be destroyed in one second, but it takes years and years to rebuild. It's a simple concept to understand, but on the ground you really feel and see it. There's a minority of people who can make it work for themselves, but others get frustrated and young people get a to a point where they hit a ceiling and question whether it is worth staying. When it comes to the future of the country, those at the highest level of government should be supporting the young people like Senad is. Why is this old, wily luge coach the guy responsible for cultivating young talent there? There's so much talent in Sarajevo and someone like Senad can only do so much.

How has the film been received in Sarajevo?

Showing the film at the Sarajevo film festival was one of the greatest experiences of my life. From the start of the process, the boys kept asking me, “Is this going to be in SFF? Is this going to be in SFF?”, and I told them they had to ask the film gods! There's just so much pride around the film festival, because it's so positive there. People still talk about the Olympics because it was such a positive thing for the city and that's why the festival stands out because it's something that people come to from all over the world – I saw Willem Dafoe there. We showed The Track in the old town with 1,000 people at the screening. Everyone got to be on the red carpet and it was amazing for the boys and Senad, who are all underappreciated, to get their flowers and be recognized and appreciated in their own city. It was so touching and heartwarming to witness and I was really just on the sidelines for it. The best movie for me was watching all of this unfold in front of my eyes. It ended up winning the audience award, which is the highest award the film could receive there, and it's a moment that I constantly play over and over in my head.

What are your plans for the future? Any projects in the pipeline?

The first thing I want to do is to get as many people as possible to see the film through a wide release. the documentary market is a bit tricky at the moment, so navigating that is consuming. Aa a documentary filmmaker, you have to be nimble, you have to be creative. What's been really nice is the Bosnian diaspora and their response in places like Missouri and Toronto, which have large Bosnian populations. We do grassroots screenings and things like that which have to be utilized as an independent filmmaker to help you transition out of the festival circuit.

Are there any films you're excited for or filmmakers you'd like to shoutout at VIFF '25?

Our sound supervisor Oscar Vargas has three or films that he worked on, including Akashi and Clan of the Painted Lady, so I'm going to try and catch those. I also met Ava Maria Safai, who made Foreigner, and I want to see that as it looks interesting. I may be a documentary filmmaker but I love scripted projects and am curious about that process. Maybe one day I'll make one – I'd love to do Cool Runnings 2!

The Track screened at VIFF 2025 and will be released in 2026 .

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