Feather buyers

This, of course, is the best work of the director Alexander Petrovich, moreover, recognized by the Yugoslav Film Academy in 1996 (alas, after the death of the director in 1994 in Paris), the second among the best Serbian films of the entire post-war period. A gypsy mundane, sometimes rude criminal story is told in a surprisingly poetic and penetrating way, which allows modern viewers to make sure that the undoubted talent of another Yugoslav author Emir Kusturitsa did not arise from scratch, although Kusturitsa went beyond Petrovich and could, unlike him , very peculiarly fit into foreign cinema.

In the northern Serbian region of Vojvodina, different nationalities have always lived - Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Slovenes, as well as Gypsies, who were nevertheless perceived as marginal in comparison with other local inhabitants. An attractive Bora gypsy from the small town of Sombor, which is located almost on the border with Hungary, was a goose feather buyer, competing for this territory with an older Mirta. Despite the fact that Bora is married and has children, she spends most of her time drinking, playing cards and loving adventures with outsiders, primarily with the gypsy singer Lenka. In addition, he is in love with Tisa, trying to recapture her from Mirta, who himself plans for the account of a young girl, although Tisa is the daughter of his ex-wife, but born in another marriage. The enmity between Bora and Mirta over the same object of passion leads to very dramatic consequences.

• Bekim Fehmiyu
• Oliver Vucho
• Velimir "Bata" Zhivoyinovich
• Gordana Jovanovic
• Mia Alexic
• Rachel ferari
• Severin Bielic
• Ethelka Filipowski
• Milorad Jovanovic
• Milive Djordjevic

The film “Feather Buyers” (in the West it was known under the more beautiful name “I saw even happy gypsies”, borrowed from the gypsy song “Dzhel, dzhel”, repeatedly played in it) was not deprived of attention far beyond Yugoslavia.

He was awarded a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Globe and Oscar in the USA (then the award of the American Film Academy went to the no less famous Czechoslovakian film “ Trains under close supervision ” by Jiri Menzel ).

And Alexander Petrovich himself began to shoot in the future with the support of European producers - “Soon there will be an end to the world”, “Master and Margarita”, “Group portrait with a lady” and “Migrants”. But these works did not cause such an artistic resonance as “Buyers of Feathers”. The main thing is that the director worked in sometimes completely different styles within even one tape, which is especially noticeable in the very uneven and controversial film adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel.

And the film Migrants, which was shot for a long time and with considerable difficulties, turning out to be the final creation of the 60-year-old Serbian film master, converged by the will of fate in the program of the Cannes Film Festival in 1989 together with The House for Hanging / Time of the Gypsies by Emir Kusturica . And the younger Bosnian just won at that moment for himself a personal place in world cinema with almost the exclusive right to further present Gypsies on the screen.

• Feather Buyers on the Internet Movie Database
• Feather Buyers on allmovie
• Feather Buyers at Rotten Tomatoes
• "Feather Buyers" on the Afisha magazine website