Underground

An epic, wild, extremely black tragi-comedy, “Underground” traces the war torn history of Yugoslavia from World War II to Bosnia. The story focuses on two friends, Marco and Blacky, and their absurd misadventures over the last 50 years. Based on Dusan Kovacevic’s story “Once upon a time there was a country”, the characters in this film inhabit a world of self-delusion, deceit and abuse, but also of revelry, vitality and love. Kusturica’s blend of lush surrealism, wistful fantasy and dark irony, perfectly juxtapose both the hilarity and intense drama of this tale of townsfolk who, in an effort to escape the brutality of war go underground. It is both an historical documentation of the complexities of Yugoslavian politics, as well as an absurdly dark fairytale of unpredictable proportions about the absurdity of war. In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles.