AllMovie

The marriage of convenience is a popular conceit in fiction, especially in stories about immigrants -- someone facing deportation finds a cooperative member of the opposite sex, they say "I do," and soon a green card appears and everyone lives happily ever after. But is it really that easy? Filmmaker Atanas Georgiev decides to find out with the help of a pair of footloose Yugoslavians in the documentary Cash and Marry. Atanas and Marko would love more than anything to give up life in Eastern Europe in exchange for a new home in Vienna, and they set out to find women who will be willing to wed them in exchange for some cash and the promise of a quick divorce. But finding a stranger willing to consent to such a scheme isn't easy (especially when you attempt to attract prospective brides by handing passers-by flyers reading "Will you marry me?"), and even after one of them does find an idealistic Communist who wants to help him stay in Europe, there are plenty of legal hoops to jump through before they can get married in a nation where immigrants are a growing and not always welcome presence. Cash and Marry was an official selection at the 2009 Hot Docs International Film Festival.