MARSHAL TITO’S SPIRIT

English Title: MARSHAL TITO’S SPIRIT

He's baaaaaaack! A specter haunts a sleepy island in the Adriatic, first materializing at the funeral of an old Communist Party hardliner. The phantom's familiar uniform and pose brings a shock of recognition to the natives. Can it be, can it really be . . . the ghost of Josip Broz Tito? The Yugoslavian strongman's iron grip held a patchwork socialist state together until death claimed the mighty Marshal in 1980. Now Tito walks again, and the town is in an uproar. The mayor, knowing how an apparition of the Blessed Virgin brought heavenly tourist trade to Medjugorje, spreads the gospel that “Tito's spirit lives here,” and opens his bar and hotel to grim, grizzled partisans flocking in from the mainland. The town's prodigal son Stipe, now a police officer, returns home to solve the mystery of the undead dictator, and perhaps exscape his mother's matchmaking schemes with a comely new schoolteacher. Even the Eastern European clones of Agents Scully and Mulder show up to probe the escalation of Tito sightings. We've long suspected that Karl was one of the funnier Marx Brothers, and now there's proof, in this rollicking satire of political personality cults, dictator nostalgia and left-wing dogma, from the creators of the surprise hit “How the War Started on My Island” (22nd CIFF, 1998). (In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles)