Underground · reception & legacy
1995 · Emir Kusturica
How Underground has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Won Kusturica his second Palme d'Or in 1995, then got engulfed in a firestorm — French intellectuals branded it pro-Serb propaganda mid-Yugoslav-wars, and a bruised Kusturica briefly announced his retirement. Today the politics row has faded and it's widely embraced as the great delirious epic of Yugoslavia's collapse.
What's debated
The fight never fully dies: rapturous masterpiece of Balkan surrealism, or a slippery apologia that lets Serbia off the hook — cinephiles still pick sides.
Its footprint
Goran Bregović's brass-band score ('Kalashnikov', 'Mesečina') escaped the film entirely, kicking off a Europe-wide Balkan brass craze — the image of a frantic trumpet section chasing the characters is the film in one frame.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd darling and double-Palme trophy piece, routinely handed to newcomers as THE gateway into ex-Yugoslav cinema.