Cinema Quarantino: Cirkus Columbia (2010) dir. Danis Tanović

Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanović’s Cirkus Columbia is one of those hidden gems of modern Eastern European cinema that, had it been made in English, it would have been a serious contender for multiple major categories at the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, its limited Bosnian audience has, for the most part, confined the title to relative obscurity.

Though it is set in Herzegovina in 1991, just after the dissolution of communist Yugoslavia and overlapping with the Yugoslav Wars, Bosnian politics are part of the film’s main attraction. Divko Buntić (Miki Manojlović), a Bosnian expatriate in Germany, returns home for the first time in over 20 years, along with his fiancée Azra (Jelena Stupljanin) and his sickly black cat.

A rich and sullied man, Divko immediately evicts his soon-to-be ex-wife Lucija (Mira Furlan) and his son Martin Buntić (Boris Ler), whom he has never been a father to. Martin, obsessed with radios, sneaks back into the apartment he was just evicted from through the skylight so that he can tinker with his radios for the night. Martin falls asleep and the cat escapes through the skylight that Martin left open—for much of the runtime, Martin and Azra search together for it while the pending war creeps closer.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.