Bela Aldeia, Bela Chama

I've seen it again today. I've seen it ten years ago when it first came out. On a 17x copied VHS bootleg tape, and now on DVD. Without going into details, I can only say this is one of the movies that I've seen many times and each time I see it it strikes me as the best of the best. It's multi layered and highly symbolic at times, due to that, the only ones to understand it fully are people that have a good understanding of the Balkan wars and/or the mentality of the characters. Some see it as pro-Serbian propaganda, other see it as anti-Serbian. And that alone makes it worth watching for me. Anyways, it's a chilling and wonderful masterpiece. Sad, bleak, darkly humorous at times but very very VERY good.

even if you were not on balkans - ex-Yugoslavia, this movie will 'hurt' you... and if you are from there - it just kills you, makes you feel pain, and laugh at the same time... it is about a great country that does not exist anymore - and maybe never existed, and about OGRE from the tunnel whick lives in each and every one of us. the subtitles (for USA) are not the first class.the translation could have been done better. anyway great movie.

This movie was stunning. Foreign films are usually seen as so difficult to grasp and inaccessible, but this managed to hold everything together. At two and a bit hours, it sometimes seems to go on, but the finale is worth it. People laughed and people cried. It was beautiful.

A very powerful film. One of the best war/anti-war films I can remember, and there are a lot of them. Worth watching if only for a fantasy scene resembling a music video when over a rock song that translates essentially as "their dancing to rock and roll in jugoslavia and everything is going down the hole."

Mix of starkly realistic war footage and very black comedy. Essential for anyone who wants to understand any of the Balkan wars.

An extraordinary film in the best tradition of Serbian cinematography which itself has a proved track record stretching all the way back to and throughout the Yugoslav era, and the one that far outweights contributions from other former YU regions. It's a big shame that non-Serbian speaking viewers cannot completely appreciate the spark and the breeziness of the dialogue, although the English subtitled translation is generally quite dextrous and does the best it can, by and large getting it right amidst very strong (sometimes amusingly so) language. The acting too is superb - a brilliant episode by Petar Bozovic (Sloba), a great turn from the main lead (Dragan Bjelogrlic, as Milan) - and a truly moving performance by Zoran Cvijanovic (Speedy, the self proclaimed 'unreformed drug addict currently getting anti drug war group therapy'). All in all, a group of very talented actors of a certain generation at work, and a tough and gritty piece of film making, which manages to be ominously dark (the amusement park flashback sequences are hauntingly disturbing), but also nostalgic, clinically sobering and mordantly humorous at the same time, whilst steering clear of pro-Serbian propaganda, opting instead, as another user correctly pointed out, for a sort-of-pro-Yugoslav one.

Quite revealing is an exchange between Velja (Nikola Kojo) and Gvozden (Velimir-Bata Zivojinovic, a veteran and a favourite of Serbian cinema in a routinely poignant performance) - halfway through the film - a few succinct lines spoken there which may offer a clue as to what Yugoslavia as a country was - or might have been - all about; and why events that ensued during the nineties actually took place. Great stuff, still going strong ten years on.