Underground (1995)

Synopsis

1941. Belgrade. Marko, communist activist let his friend Blacky enter the Party. But German invade Yugoslavia and the two friends will share their time between acts of resistance and very profitable traffics.

They will share also beautiful Natalja, an actress whom a Nazi officer "protects". During the conflit, Marko will arrange to lock up Blacky and its clan in the basement of an house of Belgrade. Thus will he be able to keep Natalja for himself only.



In 1945, he will voluntarily silence the people of the basement who manufacture weapons for Resistance that the country was free.

He will continue to exploit them during decades, for his greater profit. But one day, the slaves will leave the basement and will find their country devastated by the civil war...

Cast: Miki Manojlović, Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jokovic, Slavko Stimac, Davor Dujmović

Cannes (In Competition): Palme d'Or, New York, AFI FEST (Tributes), San Francisco

Critics' Reviews:

Although it won Emir Kusturica a second Palme d'Or at Cannes (the first was for When Father Was Away on Business), this bittersweet dramatisation of the decline of Yugoslavia so angered critics in his native Bosnia (for failing to condemn Serbian aggression in the ongoing civil war) that he threatened to abandon cinema altogether.

Beneath the black farce — Second World War partisans take refuge in a cellar, which becomes their home for decades — there are traces of a nostalgic allegiance to the illusory union of Tito's Yugoslavia, even though Kusturica acknowledges that this regime relied on indoctrinating people into accepting the imperative to perpetuate the wartime spirit of resistance. With much of the action taken at a frantic pace, to the accompaniment of brass or gypsy bands, this is as breathless as it is perplexing.

Read about this film

Country: France | Yugoslavia | Germany | Hungary
Language: Serbo-Croatian | German | French
Color: Color
Runtime: 194 min.