The film opens with a faux newsreel-presented as a sardonic allusion to the Yugoslav state-owned Filmske novosti news organization's tone and delivery-reporting on the 27 June 1971 opening ceremony of the Tunnel of Brotherhood and Unity near an unnamed village in the GoraЕѕde municipality in eastern SR Bosnia-Herzegovina, constituent unit of the Yugoslav Federation. The main timeframe includes the 'present' with a hospitalized Milan, with flashbacks to both his childhood and his early adulthood in the 1980s until the war begins, and subsequent service as a soldier where he is trapped in the tunnel. The film features a non-linear plot line, and the scenes cut back and forth throughout the 1971 to 1999 time period in no particular order. Following the success of the movie, BuliД‡ wrote a novel named Tunel-essentially an expanded version of his magazine article.

The plot is inspired by a real-life occurrence in eastern Bosnia from the opening stages of the Bosnian War, with the film's screenplay based on a Vanja BuliД‡-written, Duga magazine published long-form piece about the actual event.

Manda lepa sela lepo gore