The Marathon Family

The Topalović family has been in the funeral business for six generations and all of them live in the same house: the eldest is a hundred and twenty and still not dying. Mirko, the youngest, hates his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, and the fight over the inheritance turns into a war inside the house. Slobodan Šijan adapted Dušan Kovačević's play and set it in Serbia in the thirties. The black comedy is about not death but a family that refuses to die, and the family plainly stands as the equivalent of a political order. It grows more savage as it goes and nobody is left standing. It is among the most cited comedies in Yugoslav cinema and its lines are still quoted in the region. Who it is for: viewers who like Balkan black comedy and allegory. Who it is not for: anyone without the local context, since part of the humour comes from there.