Set in 1992, the film follows Luka (Slavko Štimac), an eccentric Serbian engineer who has moved to a remote mountain village in Bosnia with his opera-singer wife, Jadranka, and their soccer-obsessed son, Miloš. Luka is obsessed with building a scenic railway designed to bring tourism to the region—a project fueled by his relentless optimism even as the drums of war begin to beat. The conflict quickly shatters his idyllic life:
Critics often describe watching a Kusturica film as being "stone-cold sober in a room of drunken revelers". features all the director's beloved (and sometimes exhausting) tropes: Life Is a Miracle (2004) - Rotten Tomatoes
Luka is given a Bosnian Muslim nurse named Sabaha (Nataša Šolak) as a hostage, with the intent of trading her for his son.
