Mica Tomic Movies

The Kosovo region of Yugoslavia near the Albanian border is the scene of political unrest and a modern Romeo and Juliet romance in this satirical political drama. A film director (Meto Jovanovski) gathers information for his documentary about the Serbs being forced to depart by Albanian Moslems. As the region heads towards ethnic warfare, the young Albanian woman Nadira (Sonja Jacevska) falls in love with the Serbian Miloljub (Cedo Arobabic). He is captured and castrated, and the private lives of Milobjub and Nadira become part of the director's story in his film. He must answer to the financiers and producers who believe his film was to be a comedy. The events foreshadow a long and bloody conflict between two factions, a battle that has not abated in the ten years since this film's initial release. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this melodrama about companionship and life, two friends are released from jail for different reasons -- one has a weekend pass, and the other is terminally ill -- and they go out looking for the past they left behind when they were imprisoned. As the healthy prisoner searches for his wife and son, his view on the meaning of existence is very much affected by his dying friend. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Sometimes handling the dead can be almost as difficult as handling the living, according to the Topalovic family and its many members -- from great-grandparents on down. They are losing ground in the fight to keep their cemetery business from going under and have had to make a clandestine alliance with n'er-do-well entrepreneurs that will supply them with recycled coffins at a cheap price -- an alliance that has kept the family in heavy debt to the grave-digging crooks. Meanwhile, young Mirko Topalovic has fallen in love with the daughter of one of the increasingly wealthy partners in the used coffin business. She works for a movie theater as a pianist (it is the era when silents are on the way out) and the owner of the theater has not yet fired her and switched to talkies because he wants her for himself. He suggests that they make a movie together -- an erotic movie he thinks to himself -- but seduction is his only goal. When Mirko starts to help out in this movie project, he comes to realize what is actually going on and overpowered by rage, he kills the woman and the theater owner. Puffed up with his aggressive deed, he goes home to convince the Topalovic family that they have to take up arms against the usurious grave-diggers -- and a wild and bloody melée ensues that will determine the fate of the family. Jelisaveta Sablic won the "Best Actress" award at the 1982 Pula Film Festival for her role as the sought-after female lead in this film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The well-meaning crew put in charge of investigating illegal house-building in Yugoslavia causes more troubles both for the house-builders and for the country's higher ups than either have much use for. They are soon pressured to be less conscientious. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This Yugoslavian film is a political satire/farce, and, to the best of its ability, pokes fun at everything having to do with official Stalinist pieties. The story concerns the relationship between two families: one is a wealthy middle-class family, fully competent in tennis and embroidery, the other family belongs to a Party Commissar, who has commandeered the first family's house for his own residence. Perhaps mercifully, the Commissar did not kick out the original inhabitants of the house. His family teaches the capitalist family about revolution and communist theory, and the son and daughter of that family grow enthusiastic for the cause. This film has many visual "in" jokes which refer to movies by such greats as Fellini, Makaveyev, etc., and others which refer to Stalinist excesses. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide