This rambunctious Serbian black comedy is a death-and-sex fairy tale about a pair of virginal sisters who embark on a romantic quest to save their village. It’s the 1920s, and Serbia’s menfolk have been wiped out by war – good business for Ognjenka and Little Boginja, the village funeral wailers. But when they accidentally kill bedridden Grandpa Pisa, the village’s last surviving male, they are sent to wander the blasted wastes in search of a replacement, with their dead grandmother’s soul held as collateral. By great good fortune they contrive to meet and seduce a man apiece, but then find themselves reluctant to return to the village with their prizes…

Tears for Sale is both a grotesque send-up of national stereotypes – a dark, backwards world of grief, superstition and drunkenness thronged with sex-starved virag­oes – and a gothic pantomime, complete with candles, witches, bats and funerals. There are some excellent set-pieces: spider brandy is downed in the village drinking hole and the women cavort with visions of their departed menfolk; a couple have sex in an exploding minefield, and the sisters find themselves competing with a town full of crazed flappers dancing the Charleston. This narrat­ive exaggeration and exuberance is perfectly matched by the animated-storybook feel of the atmospheric visuals, with their sepia base tint, cut-out props, wheeling camera, and fantastical effects.

Funny and original, Tears for Sale hitches up its skirts and stamps all over dull realism like a drunken wench dancing a Gnjilane on the pub table.