When Father Was Away on Business

REVIEW
Focusing on one family's life in Communist Yugoslavia in the early 1950s, this tender, Fellini-esque drama unfolds with disarmingly gentle humor and perceptive political sentiments. The story takes the point of view of Malik, a six-year-old boy whose philandering father is exposed as an "anti-Tito/Stalin Communist" by his loose-lipped lover and his Communist Party brother-in-law. He is sent to prison and his absence is explained to Malik as a "business trip," but the boy soon discovers the truth and begins to understand the compromises and lies one must make to get by. A lusty, boisterous look at life in a society repressed but undetered by the political tyranny of the times. (Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles)