Arizona Dream


Original Title : The Arrowtooth Waltz (1993)
Language : english
Length : 140 mn
Music : Goran Bregović, Iggy Pop
Script : David Atkins, Emir Kusturica
Photo : Vilko Filać
Awards :

  • Silver Bear (Special Jury Price) at Berlin International Film, 1993


An Innuit hunter races his sled home with a fresh-caught halibut. This fish pervades the entire film, in real and imaginary form. Meanwhile, Axel tags fish in New York as a naturalist's gofer. He's happy there, but a messenger arrives to bring him to Arizona for his uncle's wedding. It's a ruse to get Axel into the family business. In Arizona, Axel meets two odd women: vivacious, needy, and plagued by neuroses and familial discord. He gets romantically involved with one, while the other, rich but depressed, plays accordion tunes to a gaggle of pet turtles


>>> watch the trailer (with French subtitles)

Casting :


Soundtrack :

  1. In the deathcar (LP version)
  2. Dreams
  3. Old Home Movie
  4. TV screen
  5. 7/8 & 11/8
  6. Get the money
  7. Gunpowder
  8. Gypsy reggae
  9. Death
  10. This is a film
  11. American Dreamers Old Home Movie (Johnny Depp)

If you search the soundtrack : Original Motion Picture soundtrack CD of Arizona Dream on Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, or Amazon.co.uk


DVD, VHS


The french DVD :


Released : april 2002
Languages : English, French
Subtitles : French
Bonus :


Anecdotes :


After the adventure of Time of the Gypsies, and because of increasing instability in Yugoslavia, Emir decides to change air and exiles in the United States. He will there teach cinema at the Columbia University in New York. At the same time in Sarajevo, bosnian muslim miliamen raided the Kusturica family appartement, even taking the director's prizes. His parents leave to Montenegro ; his father will die a few months later. For Emir, the death of his father has always been connected to the death of Yugoslavia.

The film was shot in the United States, produced by UGC and should have benn distributed by Warner, but the film was not entitled to a single theatre in the United States... what is comprehensible, considering violent local critics such as : "All of it is has odd and badly acted boron, guaranteed to clear theatres in record time." - Boxoffice Magazine

Due to royalty problems, the soundtrack was withdrawn from sale a few weeks after its released. It has just been republished in September 2002, including an additional piece... and complete credits for song In the Deathcar. The tune was in fact borrowed from a Corsican song Solenzara.

Paul Leger is a great fan of cinema: his favorite films are : North by Northwest (1959), The Godfather: Part II (1974) and Raging Bull (1980).

The film was mainly shot in Douglas (Arizona), as well as in New York and in Alaska, reaching thus the three corners of the american territory. The film is, by the way, articulated on triangles : Axel is shared between the love for Grace and for Elaine.

Emir Kusturica : " Isn't this image of a fish swimming in a deserted architecture, finally (...) the image of what we are ? Dumb fishes, unable to do anything essential for their existence... "

Emir Kusturica : "The America I love is like the cinema it does not produce anymore."

The film was shot in LC Concept digital sound. It is the cinema max Linder in Paris which was the French theatre to show the most films in LC Concept. The cinema preserves the material as well as some discs, and shows regularly, at the annual festival "the max Linder makes its Cineclub", Arizona Dream in this format now disappeared. Other theatres were also equipped with LC Concept in Paris : Gaumont Grand Ecran Italie, UGC Triumphs, UGC Normandy, Forum Horizon...
Unfortunately, a bad marketing policy (the process, according to its inventors, was firstly intended for the "large prestige theatres"), combined with a stealing of the patent by American system DTS in 1993, the whole followed by a long trial which will prohibit for example the exploitation in France of Jurassic Park in DTS (shown in simple Dolby SR), will condemn the process which will be finally sold to the Americans.

"If you want to know one's soul, ask him what are his dreams... And you will have pity of those who are in the shit. "


Critics :


Posters :


France France (DVD) United Kingdom United Kingdom (DVD) Hungary (DVD) Hungary (VHS)
Italy Italy (DVD) Yugoslavia Poland (DVD) Russia (DVD) Russia (VHS)
United States Germany


Pictures :