Life is Beautiful
DUTCH PREMIERE (restored version)
Sick of the system he works in, an engineer stops the train in the middle of nowhere. The passengers decide to spend some time in a local cafe, where tensions and arguments escalate into violence.
A local train stops at the wrong time in the wrong place. What begins as an inconvenient delay soon becomes a pressure cooker, as strangers from different walks of life are thrown together and their civility gradually gives way to suspicion, resentment and violence. Based on the novel by Aleksandar Tišma, this cult Yugoslav drama offers a darkly comic microcosm of a society coming apart at the seams.
SCREENINGS
Saturday 21 November 13:30
Saturday 28 November 18:30
Programme section(s): Old Gold: 100 Years of Pavle Vuisić (1926-1988)
Original title: Život je lep | Year: 1985 | Runtime: 100′
Country: Yugoslavia | Language: Serbian | Subtitles: English
Cast: Rade Šerbedžija, Sonja Savić, Dragan Nikolić, Pavle Vuisić, Ljubiša Samardžić
Director: Boro Drašković | Production: Neoplanta Film, Union Film | Screenplay: Boro Drašković, Maja Drašković | Cinematography: Božidar Nikolić | Editing: Andrija Zafranović
FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
Festival of Yugoslav Feature Film in Pula, 1985 – Golden Arena for Best Cinematography, Golden Gladiator for the Biggest Aesthetic Achievement in Film Art | Venice Film Festival, 1985 – Special Mention for Actress Sonja Savić; Nominated for the Golden Lion
DIRECTOR’S BIO
Boro Drašković is a Serbian director, playwright and screenwriter. He graduated from Belgrade’s Academy of Theatre, Film, Radio and Television in 1959 and entered the film industry as an assistant to Polish director Andrzej Wajda in 1962, later assisting Jerzy Kawalerowicz. He sold his first screenplay in 1964 and made his first fiction feature, Horoscope, in 1969, followed by three more features, all of which he co-scripted. He has also made documentaries and worked in television and radio, and has written several books on cinema and theatre. In 2010, he received an honorary doctorate from the École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle.
