The Way Steel Was Tempered is many things: a kinetic crime melodrama, a prophetic comedic look into turbo(neo)liberal usurpations of factories and industry, a snapshot of Yugoslavia under the increasing stranglehold of factionalism, ideological equivocation and the barbaric pursuit of power at all costs. Yet it is also, in a peculiar sense, a remake. Želimir Žilnik—who toured the Harvard Film Archive in November last year and whose Oldtimer was made immediately after this one—confesses as much without hesitation or bravado: “Every filmmaker is inspired or encouraged by other people’s films. This is as clear as day. Not a single filmmaker exists who was never excited, intrigued, moved or angered in a movie theater. In April 1988, I was invited by Sveta Udovički [former director of Neoplanta production, once removed and now reinstalled] to urgently make a ‘simple film, but it has to be a comedy.’ The film had to be finished in time for the Pula Film Festival in summer. The offer was provocative, but I couldn’t turn down Sveta. I called Miša Milošević and together we watched Lina Wertmüller’s The Seduction of Mimi (1972). Are these influences visible in The Way Steel Was Tempered? I should not be the one to claim that.”