The opening sequence of Vimukthi Jayasundara’s The Forsaken Land suggests a metaphoric, alien landscape – a land transfigured by the buried scars of a decades-long civil war and the ominous disquiet of a fragile, uncertain peace. A lone militia guard, Anura (Mahendra Perera) patrolling the main road to a remote village, passes his idle hours […]
On a raining afternoon in a remote Hungarian countryside at some indeterminate time after the collapse of the 1848 revolution against Austrian rule, an unassuming man is led away from the oddly surreal congregation of weary prisoners who have been assembled at the courtyard of a detention camp on nebulous grounds of suspicious activity. The […]
Underground begins on a deceptively lyrical, unassuming note: “Once upon a time, there was a country.” On the evening of April 6, 1941, two drunken profiteers, Marko (Miki Manojlovic) and Blacky (Lazar Ristovski) celebrate their latest caper – the theft of a government arms shipment – accompanied by a raucous, obliging gypsy band. However, their […]
Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies is a curious, visually hypnotic film: a lyrical glimpse into an exotic, obscure culture, a tragedy of lost innocence, a reaffirmation of love and family. At the center of the story is a young man named Perhan (Davor Dujmovic) who lives in a Gypsy ghetto with his grandmother (Ljubica […]
During the turbulent political climate of 1950 Sarajevo, as the nascent socialist federation of Yugoslavia under Marshall Josip Tito began to exert its independence from the Soviet Union, young Malik’s (Moreno de Bartolli) only pressing concern is to earn enough money with his best friend Joza in order to buy a genuine leather football and […]
Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) has lived a long and prosperous life of a feudal warlord, his reign marked by devastating territorial battles, humiliation of the vanquished, and brutal punishment of those who flout his authority. One day, in the presence of neighboring feudal lords and attendants, he announces his decision to step down from power […]