Balcancan

Running time: 89 mins

A corpse is wheeled into the morgue, but as soon as he starts telling his story to the curious bodies on the other slabs, you know that this is no ordinary movie. Opening with this outrageous bit of macabre humor, Darko Mitrevski?s (Goodbye, 20th Century ? Cinequest, 1999) rollicking Bal-can-can thrusts the viewer into its madcap world of crime, loyalty, wild escapades and dynamic fantasy spanning over fifty years. The plot kicks off in the 1950s, following blood brothers, Vitomir and Serafim, as they muscle their way through Macedonia.

One of their scams backfires and the two friends become separated across Europe, prompting a reunion a generation later by their sons, Santino and Trendafil. A civil war is raging in the land, so they take to the road with the help of beautiful Ruza from Greece to Montenegro to Kosovo, a nonstop quest where people can swim entire oceans and grannies wrapped in red carpets disappear from one moment to the next.

Boldly antic and filled with flights of fancy, Mitrevski?s epic comedy may remind audiences of Emir Kusturica?s monumental Underground, although Balcancan has a whirlwind comic energy of its own. Humor modulates from the surreal to the fantastic, yet as the film progresses and issues of Balkan identity come to the fore, the line between comedy and tragedy becomes exhilaratingly tangled.

Fernando F. Croce

MAVERICK COMPETITION