Sporting three awards and an Oscar nomination for 'Best Foreign Film', "Cabaret Balkan" was a huge success in the former Yugoslavia despite the authorities' attempts to repress it. It is also the first Serbian film to have been theatrically released there and to have premiered in Sarajevo in an event sponsored by the UN.

And, emerging from this wave of excitement, comes an extremely strong film. Book-ended by a cabaret-style master of ceremonies, the picture is a stark illustration of the hell-hole that Yugoslavia has become as it follows assorted characters (some of whose paths eventually cross) during a freezing winter's night in Belgrade. A young man who accidentally bumps into another's car is assaulted at home by thugs who are happy to smash the only photograph of his dead mother; a policeman, whose body has been badly broken (like, of course, Yugoslavia itself) faces the man who smashed him up; an idiotic bruiser murders his best friend with a bottle before killing himself and a troubled girl with a grenade; a bus journey turns into a nightmare ride and, as with most other scenes, is shot through with pointless, uncontrolled violence; one harrowing scene, which includes the drowning of an estranged husband, points to the impossibility of love. Women are treated appallingly throughout.

Paskaljevic's symbolic reading of Yugoslavia is always clear but never pretentious, and his sturdy style usually involves explosive encounters between two individuals, filmed in close-up, whose faces betray anxiety, stupidity and the desperation of those who bear witness as their country continues on a road to hell. (There are quite a number of shots of the relentless white line down the middle of the road.) There is absolutely no flab on a film which glues character to situation with immense power. Though meant to be a black comedy, the little comedy on offer is only of the sourest sort. "Cabaret Balkan" is, in reality, a scorching, biting, relevant, highly serious drama.

In Serbo-Croatian with English Subtitles