Ulysses' Gaze

Angelopoulos's three-hour journey across the Balkans. A director goes in search of three lost reels: the first film strips shot in the Balkans by the Manakis brothers at the turn of the century, never developed. He leaves Greece and travels through Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia to Sarajevo. It was shot during the Bosnian war, and the Sarajevo section was filmed in the city under actual siege; the fog-covered city on screen is not a set. Its most cited sequence has a statue of Lenin cut into pieces, loaded onto a barge and carried down the Danube. Villagers on the bank cross themselves. Harvey Keitel plays the director, with Erland Josephson and Maia Morgenstern in support. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1995. Angelopoulos said openly at the ceremony that he was disappointed not to have won the Palme d'Or, which became one of the festival's most discussed moments. Who it is for: viewers who can take the long take, a slow pace and Balkan history. Who it is not for: impatient viewers. It runs over three hours, dialogue is sparse, and some shots last for minutes.