Black Cat, White Cat

Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat (Crna mačka, beli mačor) won the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice in 1998. The film returned Kusturica to international acclaim after the political controversy that had surrounded his previous Palme d'Or-winning Underground (1995); critics and audiences generally received Black Cat, White Cat as the lighter, more joyful counterpart to Underground's political sprawl.

On the banks of the Danube, in a Romani village whose economy is built on smuggling, theft and improvisation, the small-time hustler Matko (Bajram Severdžan) bungles a black-market deal and winds up owing a fortune to the volatile local gangster Dadan (Srđan Todorović). To settle the debt, Matko promises his teenage son Zare (Florijan Ajdini) in marriage to Dadan's tiny but ferocious sister Afrodita (Salija Ibraimova) — who has no intention of going through with it, having fallen in love with Zare on a previous visit, and Zare with her.

The film is structured as a series of escalating wedding-day farces — runaway brides, fake deaths, a burning marriage tent, a goose down the chimney, a brass band that never stops playing — the most exuberant work of Kusturica's career. Goran Bregović's score is among the most consistently delightful in 1990s European cinema. The film's genuine attentiveness to Romani life, despite its broad-comic register, has made it a touchstone in subsequent debates about the representation of Romani communities in European film.