The Yugoslav Black Wave
Home to one of the most distinctive of all Eastern Bloc filmmaking traditions, Yugoslavia produced a rich cinematic heritage – including the radical subversion of the “Black Wave” movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, which critiques the post-war socialist state from within. Explore our collection of Black Wave titles, including important works by Aleksandar Petrović and Dušan Makavejev.
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Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Dušan Makavejev • 1967 • Yugoslavia
This gleefully subversive, formally skittish, and surprisingly moving oddity from the inimitable Dušan Makavejev is a high point of the Yugoslav Black Wave. Centred around the doomed romance between a Hungarian switchboard operator Izabela (Eva Ras...
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I Even Met Happy Gypsies
Movie + 3 extras
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...
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Three
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Aleksandar Petrović • 1965 • Yugoslavia
The first mature masterpiece from a figurehead of Yugoslav film, Three established Aleksandar Petrović at the forefront of the so-called Black Wave movement. Across a triptych of stories, we follow a soldier named Miloš (iconic actor Velimir “B...
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Man Is Not a Bird
Movie + 1 extra
Directed by Dušan Makavejev • 1964 • Yugoslavia
Please not this title is not available to subscribers in the USThe debut feature from Yugoslav cinema’s greatest iconoclast, Man Is Not a Bird announced Dušan Makavejev to the world and paved the way for the Balkan nation’s Black Wave movement. Se...
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Breakfast with the Devil
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Miroslav Antić • 1971 • Yugoslavia
Acclaimed poet turned filmmaker Miroslav Antić made his indelible contribution to the Yugoslav Black Wave with this apocalyptic tale of love among the ruins of war and natural disaster. Set in 1947, the film captures life in a Vojvodina village duri...
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The Tough Ones
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Miodrag Popović • 1968 • Yugoslavia
Renowned painter turned filmmaker Miodrag Popović made his indelible contribution to the Yugoslav Black Wave with this harsh but humanist take on the psychic scars of war. Two brothers, Isidor (Jovan Janićijević-Burduš) and Gvozden (Danilo ‘Bata’ S...