Time of the Gypsies

Time of the Gypsies (Dom za vešanje, 1988) is Emir Kusturica's drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Perhan, a young man in a poor Roma settlement near Skopje, can move objects with his mind and wants nothing more than a house and a wedding with the girl he loves.

His grandmother raises him and heals the sick without medicine. Around them: a hopeless gambler of an uncle and a sister, Danica, whose leg needs an operation. Azra's parents won't hand their daughter to a pauper, so Perhan takes a deal with the rich elder Ahmed — go to Italy, fix his sister, come back with money. Ahmed's trade turns out to run on child begging and theft, and the boy slides into it almost without noticing. Davor Dujmović plays the drift from wide-eyed kid to a man who has lost himself, never hitting a false note.

Kusturica shot most of the film in the Romani language and laced its hard reality with waking dreams — geese floating in the sky, a bride's veil drifting over a river. Goran Bregović wrote the score, and its theme "Ederlezi" has long outgrown the movie. The film took the Best Director prize at Cannes. Stream Time of the Gypsies (1988) online on iFILM.