Matko Destanov, a small-time Romani smuggler and profiteer, lives with his teenage son Zare in a ramshackle house by the Danube River in eastern Serbia near the Bulgarian border.

To obtain a loan that would subsidize the heist, he visits Grga Pitić, a wheelchair-using old gangster, who is an old friend of Zarije Destanov, Matko's father and Zare's grandfather.

Matko plots the details of the job with an ally named Dadan, a rich, fun-living, drug-snorting gangster who has a harem, juggles grenades, and cheats at gambling.

They were not supposed to have a wedding while in mourning, but Dadan decides to delay the death announcement, so Matko and Zare hide Zarije's body in the attic, packed in ice.

In the aftermath of the worldwide success, as well as the controversy of his previous feature, Palme d'Or-winning Underground, Kusturica was so hurt by the aggressive criticism coming from several French intellectuals that he publicly announced his retirement from movies at the age of 41.

He later changed his mind, deciding to come back with a project on Gypsy music which he originally envisioned as a documentary with a working title Musika Akrobatika.

[4] The site’s critics consensus reads, "Rambling and eccentric, Emir Kusturica's comedy captures the life and energy of the Gypsy family at the heart of the tale.

"[4] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote a positive review, summing the film up as "a mad scramble through the Felliniesque realm of Mr. Kusturica's imagination".

"[6] In a generally positive review, J. Hoberman of The Village Voice refers to the film as "bravura moviemaking by any objective standard" and a "vehicle for the director's lowdown magic-realist fantasies about Romany gangsters, which has a velocity that belies its jerry-built mise-en-scène" concluding that "Black Cat, White Cat is determined to twist every character into an ideogram for vulgar humanity" while wondering if "these gypsies are a screen on which the Bosnian-born director can project his own feelings of ostracism and homelessness".

[7] Salon's Andrew O'Hehir wrote a positive review, describing the film as "manic, carnivalesque, and treating death as a minor (and temporary) inconvenience" and commends "Kusturica's convincing portrayal of his homeland as a social and architectural ruin, where everything is either falling apart or overbuilt in misbegotten grandiosity".