Underground

Emir Kusturica's Underground won the Palme d'Or at the 48th Cannes Film Festival in May 1995, Kusturica's second Palme after When Father Was Away on Business in 1985, making him one of only nine directors in the festival's history to win the prize twice. The win was politically controversial: the Yugoslav Wars were still ongoing in the summer of 1995 (the Srebrenica massacre occurred in July, weeks after the festival), and several major French intellectuals (most prominently Alain Finkielkraut and Bernard-Henri Lévy) published widely-discussed pieces accusing Kusturica's film of pro-Serbian historical revisionism.

The film is adapted from Dušan Kovačević's 1977 play Spring in January (Serbian: Proleće u januaru); Kovačević had been a major Serbian dramatist throughout the 1970s and 1980s and adapted the screenplay himself in collaboration with Kusturica. The cast pairs Miki Manojlović and Lazar Ristovski in the central male roles, with Mirjana Joković, Slavko Štimac and Ernst Stötzner in major supporting parts. Cinematography is by Vilko Filač, who had also shot Kusturica's earlier Time of the Gypsies; the score is by Goran Bregović, the Yugoslav rock musician whose work with Kusturica had spanned multiple features by this point.

The production was shot largely in Belgrade and across Serbia in 1994-1995 during active wartime, with substantial logistical challenges including currency hyperinflation, sanctions-related supply shortages and intermittent military mobilisations of Serbian-citizen crew members. The completed five-and-a-half-hour director's cut was theatrically released only in a 167-minute version; a reconstructed long version was shown only at later retrospectives. The film is regularly cited as one of the most-debated Palme d'Or winners in the festival's history.