Mira Banjac Movies

Filmmaker Goran Paskaljevic spins five tales of life in post-millennium Serbia in this provocative omnibus combining elements of comedy and drama. First, a hypnotist arrives in a small village that has been leveled by floods. The mesmerist offers his services to the community, but the residents are suspicious of his motives. Next, a woman is sexually assaulted by the man who owns the firm where she works. Her father is also employed by the same man, but when he seeks revenge, he realizes how powerless he is in this situation. In episode three, a young man loses the money earmarked for his father's funeral in a gambling spree. Desperate to win it back, he turns to an elderly woman who has been enjoying remarkable luck at the slot machines. Part four concerns a doctor who is called to examine the son of a man who operates a slaughterhouse. The boy has developed a dangerous enthusiasm for bloodshed, but the doctor doesn't realize the full ramifications of the boy's attitude until he escapes his family's home. And finally, a confidence man promising new health to a group of ailing and elderly people leaves them stranded in the middle of nowhere en route to taking the cure. Optimisti (aka The Optimists) received its North American premiere at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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

The extremes of somber, uncompromising Puritanism and a free-living, liberated view of sex form the polar opposites that pull the heroine Jaglika (Mira Furlan) in different directions. In an opening scene, an adulterous woman places a loaf of bread on her head and declares she is not worthy of the bread her husband provided her. He then shoots her. After that attention-getting device, Luka (Miodrag Karadzic) and Jaglika are married and need to find work. They approach their wealthy godfather who runs a nudist colony and Jaglika, much to her chagrin, is hired as a maid. Her puritan ethic is so strong that she can't make love to her husband unless she kept her clothes on and her face covered. Now, she gears up her courage and starts off valiantly to do her maid's job -- and the struggle between her past and the influence of the liberated couples in the nudist colony begins. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this black satire flashing back to the 1950s Yugoslavia under Tito, when relations with the Soviet Union were broken off, a pro-Stalinist Iliya (Danilo Bata Stojkovic) and his brother have never wavered in their political support of the Soviet dictator and his policies. They both served prison terms back in the 1950s for their beliefs. Now nearly three decades have passed, and a new neighbor who has spent a long time in Paris comes under police suspicion because of his long years outside the country. It turns out, however, that the man is innocent of any wrong-doing but Iliya is convinced he is a spy for the forces of imperialism, and, armed with a tape-recorder and camera, he carries out a surreptitious, evidence-gathering surveillance. At the same time, Iliya is whipping up his neighbors into a real frenzy of anti-imperialist furor directed against the hapless neighbor. Before Iliya can be stopped, even his wife joins him, but his daughter is hardly a convert -- embarrassed would be a better word. Humor and pathos rise along with the paranoia, as Iliya and his delusions rule the day. This film won the Golden Arena award at the 1984 Pula Film Festival, and Danilo Bata Stojkovic was awarded "Best Actor" for his role as Iliya, at the same festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A female reporter (Mira Banjac) travels to a small town to interview the survivors of partisan fighting, and their story is then told in flashbacks as she goes from one interview to the next. At one point, the partisans were hiding in underground caves when Croats began to torture their companions above the caves. Complicating matters for the reporter is the fact that her boss is from the town where these events occurred and has his own agenda that interferes with her story. No matter how the investigative reporting will finally finish up, the woman has come to appreciate the loyalty between the partisan fighters. Mira Banjac won the prize for best actress at the 1981 Pula Festival for her portrayal of the reporter. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This movie paints a dire picture of the plight of Yugoslavians who become immigrant laborers in Germany. Most of the hardships the hero suffers are not at the hands of Germans, but of other Yugoslavians who take advantage of ambitious immigrants. In the story, a young man is motivated to try working in Germany when he sees his brother, who has gone to do that, returning to Yugoslavia driving a fancy car. Once in Germany, he suffers a wide variety of adventures and has a brief romance before deciding that he's better off at home. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide