A ferocious, wildly inventive war satire that turns Yugoslav history into a tragicomic fever dream. It’s sprawling, funny, brutal, and politically charged, with a style that can feel intoxicating or overwhelming depending on your tolerance for chaos and allegory.
Black marketeers Marko and Blacky manufacture and sell weapons to the Communist resistance in WWII Belgrade, living the good life along the way. Marko's surreal duplicity propels him up the ranks of the Communist Party, and he eventually abandons Blacky and steals his girlfriend. After a lengthy stay in a below-ground shelter, the couple reemerges during the Yugoslavian Civil War of the 1990s as Marko sees the opportunity to exploit the situation.
A ferocious, wildly inventive war satire that turns Yugoslav history into a tragicomic fever dream. It’s sprawling, funny, brutal, and politically charged, with a style that can feel intoxicating or overwhelming depending on your tolerance for chaos and allegory.
Best for
Viewers who like surreal, maximalist cinema
Fans of black comedy mixed with war drama
People interested in Balkan history and political allegory
Audiences open to long, unruly epics with big swings
Skip if
You want a straightforward historical drama
You dislike tonal whiplash or absurdism
You prefer concise, tightly plotted films
You’re sensitive to politically contentious or provocative interpretations
Overview
Underground is the kind of film that seems to arrive as a riot and end as a lament. Emir Kusturica stages history as carnival, farce, betrayal, and national myth all at once, using music, animals, slapstick, and operatic chaos to make a war epic that feels alive in every frame.
Worth noting
What makes it so memorable is not just its scale but its refusal to settle into one emotional register. It can be hilarious, grotesque, and heartbreaking within the same scene, and that instability becomes part of its argument about propaganda, memory, and the stories nations tell themselves.
Bottom line
It is also a divisive film, especially in how it handles Yugoslav history and the politics around it. But even for viewers who disagree with its perspective, it remains a major work of cinematic invention: unruly, provocative, and impossible to mistake for anything else.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Andrew Boley (5★) · 748 likes
Probably the best film no one hears about, Underground is so full of life yet soaked in death. The director, Emir Kusturica has somehow turned the real world into a Fellini party, a Lubitsch romance with Alex Cox punk poetry mixed with Powell and Pressburger cinematic weight. At 2 hours and 45 minutes Underground only ever rests when the chapter cards appear on screen. Starting with a mentally challenged innocent young man at a zoo trying to protect a chimp… more
nick (5★) · 421 likes
How do you counterbalance the pain a nation has collectively endured? Make the most absurd comedy about it, and director Emir Kusturica did exactly that with Underground, a 3-hour long war epic that will equal parts crack you up and bring you down, well, mostly bring you down. Underground details a twisted tale of how a group of Yugoslavians are tricked into living underground for decades, unbeknown to the fact that the Nazi occupation has ended a long time ago.… more
Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋 (5★) · 356 likes
Underground is a (nostalgic??) homage to a national land that no longer exists despite its turbulent sociopolitical background. Kusturica breaks any possible boundary and increases the size of his scope gigantically, orchestrating a massive masterpiece of satirical humor, theater, war, Communism, music, trumpets, social criticisms, animals, sex, dance, kids, teens, betrayal, love, lust, surrealism, beautiful landscapes, war ruins, hilarious sound effects, WWII, audacious stunts, metafilm, slapstick violence and a monkey. Breathtaking and wall-shattering spectacle for the reflection of modernity!! 98/100
LouisDeCyphre (5★) · 343 likes
𝕍𝕚𝕖𝕨𝕖𝕕 : MUBI War and Peace Wedding and Funeral Fascism and Communism Animals and Humans Secrets and Lies Life and Death 1940s ⇨ 1960s ⇨ 1990s War ⇨ Cold War ⇨ War Fiction and Reality Love and Money Guns and Flowers Magical Realism and Surreal Comedy Underground and UNDER̶GЯOUND Emir Kusturica and Емир Кустурица
EnteredTheVoid (5★) · 253 likes
If Federico Fellini had directed a Yugoslavian war epic it probably would've went something like this. Only this is better.
2008 · Animation, Documentary, Drama · 1h 30m · R · ★ 90% (119K)
An inventive war-memory film that mixes subjectivity, trauma, and political reflection.
Themes
war and civil conflict, political satire, national myth and memory, betrayal and corruption, surrealism, black comedy, propaganda and manipulation, friendship and rivalry
Topics
war satire, black comedy, surrealism, political allegory, Balkan cinema, epic drama, absurdism, historical tragedy, carnivalesque, 1990s