In 2024, Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra returned to perform at Müpa Budapest. The night was one big party. Was it what we would call folk punk? Balkan rollicking?

Categories are meaningless. Kusturica is very consistent in his use of music in his films. (Sometimes the songs even become hits.) In this case, he wrote them himself.

The story takes place in the early ’90s, during the Yugoslav Wars. The director had already made an ambitious film (Underground, 1995) about these civil conflicts.

His 2004 film abstains from grand visions or becoming a surreal tableau, and instead unfolds in the world of ordinary people. At times a slightly realistic personal testimony, at others a boisterous burlesque. It is simultaneously hilarious and heart breaking in how the songs describe characters and their cultures – sometimes more accurately and vividly than dialogue does.

In the original language, with Hungarian subtitles.

Place: Palace of Arts

Address: 1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell utca 1