Starring: Jasna Djuricic, Boris Isakovic
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 101 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
| 
| 
The Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 11 July 1995 is overcome by Serb military and the townspeople look to take refuge with the UN. Aida, a local teacher, a translator, works hard and tries to get her family to safety.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2020.
A return to the Balkans of 25 years ago, the vicious wars, Bosnians and Serbs, Muslims and Orthodox, and the tragedy and massacre of its men citizens in Srebrenica. This devastating story is worth telling, remembering, telling again.
The writer and director of this film is Jasmila Sbanic whose 2006 film Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, about a woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Bosnian War, so strongly affected audiences. Interestingly, she won the Ecumenical Award at Berlin in 2006 – and the present film won the SIGNIS Award (World Association of Catholic Communication) in Venice 2020.
The Aida of the title is a middle-aged woman, (a powerfully persuasive performance by JDjuricic), a local schoolteacher, working as a translator for the United Nations, a squad from the Netherlands. Most of the action takes place on 11 July 1995, a frantic day – and the film movingly immerses the audience in the Srebrenica experience. The Serb forces occupy the town and thousands flee to the United Nations centre, with some able to get into the compound, but many thousands stranded outside. The Dutch UN officers are trying to deal with the situation but are not getting cooperation from headquarters.
We view all these events through Aida’s eyes, her concerns, compassion, translations, negotiating with the UN, concerned about her husband and two sons outside the compound. She will be desperate all day to get them on the buses which will transfer the townspeople to a safer destination.
There is a major episode when three of the locals are volunteered by the UN to go to negotiate with military leader, General Mladic (Boris Isakovic, interestingly the real-life husband of Jasna Djuricic). For audiences who are unaware of Mladik’s role in the wars, the atrocities and his later arrest and trial in Rotterdam, there will be suspense in watching his dealings with his soldiers. There is the propaganda filming, his cajoling words, the sending in of some food and bringing in the transport buses. For audiences who know what Mladic did and the consequences, will watch, continually appalled.
The tension builds during the day with no help from UN headquarters, the Dutch leaders abiding by the rules, trying to prevent chaos, allowing the Serb military, armed, to enter the compound to check whether the men have weapons. And, in the meantime, Aida’s trying to hide her family, and get them the on the official list for bus transportation out.
At times, the re-creation is so effective that it looks like actual newsreel footage. And it doesn’t shy away from the difficulties for the crowded refugees, hunger, lack of water, a woman washing clothes in a bucket, absence of toilets, the birth of a baby, continued uncertainty and fear.
And the film leads inexorably to the fate of the massacred men, the director able to generate the tension, the uncertainties facing of the men, separated from the women and children, intimating rather than graphically showing the cruelty of the massacre.
There is a postscript to the film. Year have passed. Aida returns to Srebrenica to teach, finds her house occupied by Serbs, joins the movement to find the bodies of the murdered men, finally the excavations and the laying out of the skeletal bones and clothes.
This is a harrowing film experience. However, despite the dire tragic experiences, the film’s end looks to the future, not without hope.
12 Random Films…
