Pretty Village, Pretty Flame gradually commands the attention with grim, self-effacing humour, an intriguing flashback structure and writer-director Srdjan Dragojevic's flair for creating complex characters.

Its scenes of lunatic brutality are nastily authentic.

One of the more interesting pictures from the former Yugoslavia.

This bleak tale is told from the point-of-view of the Serb soldier who is severely wounded in a Belgrade hospital in 1994.