Rent When Father Was Away on Business (1985)

Nostalgia with a Side of Revisionism - When Father Was Away on Business review by griggs

Father Was Away on Business arrived in 1985—ten years before Underground—and won Kusturica the Palme d’Or. Set during the Tito-Stalin split, it paints a nostalgic picture of postwar Yugoslavia before the country began to fracture. But if you’ve seen Underground, this feels oddly tame. The magical realism is a faint shimmer, the politics are hazy, and the tone rarely rises above a shrug.

What’s more striking in hindsight is how Kusturica’s later worldview begins to surface. The story follows a Bosnian Muslim family, yet the broader perspective leans subtly Serbian—a hint of the revisionism to come. It’s technically solid, even moving in parts, but emotionally it keeps its distance.

As Bernard-Henri Lévy put it, Kusturica is “so much more stupid than his work.” That tension lingers here. The film is carefully made and historically rich, but hard to love. A film you admire, more than one you feel.

Tito's children - When Father Was Away on Business review by MW

A delightful, life-affirming portrait of a struggling family seen through a child's eyes and set against the backdrop of communist restraint in 1950s Serbia in which the stifling authority of Marshal Tito is ever present. The father, a libidinous rogue, is jailed not for political incorrectness but for an extramarital fling with the mistress of a member of the local party hierarchy. He returns from his period of absence "away on business" to preside over a hilarious alfresco wedding party which becomes increasingly chaotic as the drink flows. Like all Kusturica's subsequent films this early success displays his glorious mastery of gentle anarchy mixed with human affection and a strong sense of the absurd.

Don't let the genre put you off - When Father Was Away on Business review by JD

The far reaching effects of Stalinism and that influence on Tito. Not a blockbuster plot. This is only a backdrop however for the superbly crafted view of the world as seen from the eyes of a 6 year old boy. His perception of his philandering and unreliable father is so childlike as to be nostalgic, his physical and psychological reaction to the stress suffered is tangible.