Bosnian film-maker Jasmila Zbanic was 17 when the siege of Sarajevo began. The year was 1992 — just three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time, she has said, nobody thought this could be a real war; Sarajevo was a mixed city.
Like most Bosnian Muslims she knew, she had Serbian and Croatian family. As an aspiring film-maker, she expected to study in Prague.
Reliving the trauma of the siege was difficult for filmmaker Jasmila Zbanic.Credit:
“We said ‘this will pass’,” she told The Guardian. “A month or two. There are some stupid people with guns, but they’ll be gone soon.” In the event, the siege of Sarajevo lasted 1425 days. She has been making films about the struggles within Bosnia since.
Zbanic’s latest film, Quo Vadis, Aida?, adapts an account of the 1995 massacre of almost 8000 Bosnian men and boys who were among those sheltering in a United Nations camp in Srebrenica. The film centres on a former high school teacher working in the camp as a translator, who is obliged to translate the hollow assurances of the Dutch command to the civilians crammed into the camp and milling at its gates, meanwhile trying to find safe passage for her husband and sons. It plays as a thriller. Jasna Djuracic, the Serbian actress who plays Bosnian Aida Semanagic, burns on screen like a firebrand.
Another great Serbian actor, Boris Isokovic, plays Ratko Mladic, the commander who ordered the massacre. Taking these roles was risky. Twenty-six years after the event, there are still government ministers who deny the massacre happened; there has been no official process of acknowledgement or reconciliation. “I think the war is still going on, but by other means,” says Zbanic. “I’m always thinking I’m making films about the present.
“As an artist, I feel we should offer a mirror to our society, especially showing things that are hidden or taboo but that are influencing our daily lives. Even this one, which starts in 1995, tells us about our region today. And not only our region. But not only in our region because you know, I felt that the strength the Right has today is bigger than 26 years ago when Srebrenica happened, so for me this is something people should know about, how easy it is to slip from normal life into hell.”
Hostilities continue, but at a lower level. “In Sarajevo, where I live, you know, this is not so obvious, but in villages where everybody knows everybody, this is very present and very heavy,” says Zbanic.
Many of the women who lost all the men in their families have returned to their old houses. “It brings some emotional connection they don’t have in any other place on Earth. But every year in Srebrenica, there is this Right-wing throwing stones at these women and their houses, singing songs about how happy they are that they killed everybody at every football match. It is a constant threat.”
Making the film was not easy. Finance came from co-production deals in many European countries, which complicated matters particularly when COVID-19 struck and the European Union – which does not include Bosnia – was locked down.
How easily Bosnia slipped from ‘normal life into hell’
Source: Philippines Alive
