Time of the Gypsies

The main film character Perhan is based on a real child from an orphanage in Skopje, Macedonia and the story on a real story of smuggling children in Yugoslavia in the 1980s. But, as in most of Kusturica’s films, pure realism gets transcended into poetic, magic realism with the additional flavour of superstition and mysticism in this case. The main social milieu in the film is a family within the Roma community. Time of the Gypsies is one of the few films with a Gypsy theme utilising Roma actors and the Romani language (together with Les princes by Tony Gatlif and Angelo My Love by Robert Duvall).