Directed by Aleksandar Petrović • 1967 • Yugoslavia

One of the first films from Eastern Europe to explore the lives of the Roma in sympathetic detail, and to cast Romani-speaking Roma in order to do so, Aleksandar Petrović’s Cannes-winning classic builds a complex and humanistic narrative out of the misery of life in a Vojvodina village. Ill-fated romance leads the central trio of swaggering, mean-spirited Bora (Bekim Fehmiu), folk singer Lenče (Olivera Vučo), and young beauty Tisa (Gordana Jovanović) through a whirlwind of unforeseen circumstances, captured in striking colour and intricate period detail. Aleksandar Petrović was always the most accessible of the directors who made up Yugoslavia’s “Black Wave” avant-garde in the 1960s and ‘70s, and this tribute to unruly freedom is his most populist work.

I EVEN MET HAPPY GYPSIES • SKUPLJAČI PERJA
Written and directed by Aleksandar Petrović
Cinematography by Tomislav Pinter
Music by Aleksandar Petrović
Starring: Bekim Fehmiu, Olivera Vučo, Velimir Živojinović

In Serbian and Romani with English subtitles

Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, 1967.