Mustafa Nadarevic Movies

A young man growing up in a blighted landscape turns inside himself for comfort in this drama. Marko (Marko Kovacevic) is a 13-year-old boy growing up in war-torn Macedonia who is the constant target of thuggish bullies at school, who attack him for his small physical stature and fondness for poetry. Life isn't much better for Marko at home, where his father (Vlado Jovanovski) is an abusive drunk, his mother (Elena Mosevska) is sullen and withdrawn, and his older sister is bitter and hyper-emotional. Encouraged by one of his teachers to explore his creative side, Marko spends much of his spare time in an abandoned building at a railroad yard, where he daydreams and works on his writings. One day, Marko is killing time at his hideaway when he meets a soldier who becomes his friend, confidante, and protector. But is Marko's new friend real, or just a product of his overactive imagination? Mirage (aka Iluzija) was the first dramatic feature from writer and director Svetozar Ristovski. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This Croatian suspense film offers a mystery to which there is no apparent solution. It centers on a poor student who is struggling to study acting. When Matija finds himself a free room, he is delighted, but then he learns that the three people that had the room before him all hung themselves. The police are still looking into the case. Matija suspects that the deaths have to do with the room's front window and a religious holy hour, during which, all the suicides occurred. Outside the window a lovely women clothed in black spins a web-like cloth. As he looks about, his landlady sternly orders Matija to never kill the spider that is spinning a web in the window. While Matija looks out his window, the holy hour comes and he feels strongly compelled to hang himself. He knows that the suggestion comes from the enigmatic woman across the street, but he resists and kills the spider. The landlady mourns her passing. Later, things become very strange. Matija goes to the police station and finds old Jews lined up for mandatory identity registration. At his experimental acting school, he sees a hippie rehearsing to play Nausikaja. Later that night his mute neighbor changes into a glamorous nightclub singer who entertains Nazi officers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

While the Yugoslavia depicted in this film no longer exists, the communities depicted in it do. The story provides a rare glimpse into life in that former Balkan country's Muslim communities. In the story, Becir Kuduz (Slobodan Custic) has spent years in prison for roughing up a policeman. After he gets out of prison, he wants to start a new life. He begins by marrying an unmarried woman with a child by an unknown father. Then, he attempts to make his way in life as a builder. He is very fond of his new wife, but is disturbed by her continued flirtatiousness with other men. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Two very angry teen-aged boys and one similarly wrathful girl are the focus of this tragic drama. In the story, each of them has suffered horrific and repeated rejection by their families, so that they have become each other's support system. When any one of them suffers some hurtful situation, the others show solidarity with them by joining them in acts of vandalism. Unfortunately, this proves not to be the most skillful way to avoid run-ins with the authorities, and they all eventually come to a bad end. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this downbeat drama, which won the Yugoslavian national film award in 1987, no one escapes the sufferings of the previous generation. In the story, Mihalo started out in life as a piano prodigy, but the agony his family went through when he was a youth dried his creative juices up entirely: his father was sentenced to death by a revolutionary court and his mother attempted suicide. Now he is a middle-aged man who teaches music and piano at an adult education center. His bleak existence is briefly uplifted by the unexpected attentions he receives from a lovely young girl who has problems of her own. She is only using a sexual/romantic connection with him to escape her family's ills. Her features and manner remind him of his beloved aristocratic mother. Soon a series of events drives him right over the edge and he winds up committing some horrible crimes of his own, which traumatize the next generation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this amusing anti-war comedy, seven inept and reluctant soldiers land on a desert island to carry on with the fighting. Just after their parachutes have collapsed behind them on the beach, helicopters approach and land nearby. Out pops a bevy of beautiful women sent to entertain the troops -- which they do, and then they leave. From that point onward, there are a series of misadventures, one of which leads to the inadvertent capture of an enemy submarine but most of which do not lead very far. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Yugoslavian When Father Was Away on Business (Otac na Sluzbenoh Putu) takes place in the early 1950s. The title is a euphemism: because of the strained relationship between Yugoslavia and the USSR, various private citizens have disappeared in the middle of the night, accompanied by the police. One such "vanishing" individual is Miki Manojlovic, the father of 6-year old Moreno D'E Bartolli, from whose viewpoint this story is told When Manojlovic, an employee in the labor ministry is whisked away to prison, his family reacts with pride, assuring one and all that he is "away on business" because of his fervent political beliefs. The sad truth: Manojlovic has ended up behind bars because of his sexual peccadilloes. The film details the tribulations of a fatherless family struggling to cope with the financial deprivations of Communism. Director Emir Kusturica won the Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm award for his work on When Father Was Away on Business. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Todor the Terrible (Bata Zivojinovic) and his band of fellow klutzes are out to rob their way to riches in this crime comedy by Dejan Sorak set at the end of World War I. Todor and his toadies inhabit a godforsaken region of Bosnia-Croatia, left alone by everyone except the police and the criminals who keep each other company, for the most part. Life takes on new possibilities for Todor when he and his brigands see the eight-minute movie The Great Train Robbery, which they take as nothing less than a do-it-yourself instruction manual. Inspired by this novel idea, they hold up a coach with a very winsome charmer and her wealthy gentleman friend -- and are all the richer for their experience. But misfortune and delusion are in store, as real authorities come into the region, arrest Todor, and schedule him for hanging. Like a cat with nine lives, however, there is a surprise in store for the outlaw as the fates favor him once again with a classic ironic twist. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This story is set in Sarajevo in 1941 when the Germans occupied the city, and when Muslims, Christians, and Jews supported each other (for the most part) against the foreign military presence. A Muslim patriarch is hiding a Jewish woman in his house to protect her from the German round-ups. The Christians who live nearby are also hiding weapons and resistance fighters, dissimulating when the Germans come to the door to search their houses. Ibrahim, one of the patriarch's sons, sympathizes with the resistance, but another son, Mustafa, has joined up with the occupying forces because he wants some of the loot that is bound to come his way. It does not take long for the turncoat son to meet the Jewish woman at his home -- and want her for himself. His family is so outraged at his behavior when he tries to force himself on her, that he is almost disinherited. Meanwhile the German forces come back to the patriarch's home to look for the Jewish woman, the father fights back, killing a soldier and then he, in turn, is killed. Mustafa and some German officers show up in the morning, and at the cemetery (Muslim custom is to inter the dead as soon as possible), Mustafa sees that his father has already been buried. This is the shock that creates his first realization of what the Nazi presence means, and all of a sudden, his actions take an unexpected and permanent new direction. This film was awarded "Best Screenplay" at the 1982 Pula Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide