Cabaret Balkan

In Beograd, 20 people‘s paths crisscross one night. A slackard youth dents a car; its owner hunts him down and trashes his father's flat. Michael, back from abroad, hopes to reclaim Natalia; her new, younger lover seems outclassed. A Bosnian drives a bus to eke out subsistence; his son works the Black Market for a sadist. A cabby buys drinks for a cop he crippled in revenge. Swarthy friends at a gym confess betrayals of each other; violence erupts, then one menaces a woman on a train. Another young woman, traumatized when a knife-wielding youth commandeers her bus, calls for help and ends up with a gun at her head. „Cabaret Balkan“ is a scream of agony over the madness in Kosovo and the neighboring lands where blood feuds run deep and the macho virus is a killer epidemic. It's a film about violence, sadism, brutality and the hatred of women that seems to go hand in hand with those pastimes. The director, Goran Paskaljevic, opens his film with a taxi driver telling a returning citizen: „This is a goddamned lousy country; why would anyone want to come back?“ The film shows us nothing to contradict his statement.