(♪) traditional Sevdah song in Bosnian (♪) [Stephanie█s voice] At the edge of a smoke-filled bar, I stand in awe.

Like a voyeur gazing into a world that is outside my periphery, yet somehow feels my own.

A couple dances as if they are the only ones.

And the soulful Sevdah ballad tugs at my heartstrings.

I█m swept up in a comraderie which occupies this place as if time and space has been suspended.

Those nostalgic for the past, others hopeful for the future.

Welcome to Sarajevo.

♪ “Steadee█s Groove” ♪ Hi, I'm Stephanie.

I'm a 33-year-old American filmmaker, and a complete cinema nerd.

I love the oldies, the goodies.

The New Waves or Golden Age, you name it, I'm in.

On my 33rd birthday, I decided to travel the world to meet and document other filmmakers my age.

Travel with me to over 33 countries to meet the storytellers who are dynamically challenging the status quo of the world today.

Together, we will watch their films, hear their stories, engage with their cultures, and perhaps, learn a little bit about life, love, cinema, history, and me!

[in Bosnian] [Stephanie█s voice] Born in 1986 in Yugoslavia, in the city of Sarajevo.

Tina is a multi-talented and incredibly self-assured individual.

She has both a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Dramaturgy from Sarajevo's Academy of Performing Arts, where she is an Assistant Professor in History and Analysis of Film.

We visited Tina in Sarajevo, though she lives a double life.

Splitting her time between Sarajevo and Croatia, while pursuing a PhD in Filmography from the University of Zagreb.

Tina lives half the year on Zlarin, a car-less Croatian island where she lives with her husband by the sea, writes, and helps tend to his goats.

Tina's ever evolving resumé is just as impressive.

She works in journalism as the Film New Europe correspondent for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

She is a freelance script writer, film director and producer with crew credits on some of Bosnia's most highly acclaimed films.

Including, “Cirkus Colombia,” “With Mom,” and “Snow,” which took Tina to Cannes at age 22.

Tina has worked for the Sarajevo Film Festival, and she also coordinated a production of five short films with five different directors for the Sarajevo City of Film project.

She is a very accomplished screenwriter, with her first feature selected for Berlinale Script Station.

Tina sees herself more as a writer than a director, though I wager that she is a writer AND director to watch.

[Tina] Doing films is, and you know, watching films and everything about films is my life.

It's my complete professional life.

And every morning I wake up believing that films can do a lot, that films are important, that arts and cultures are you know, the thing that is important for development of the soul of the society.

[Stephanie█s voice] Mountainous Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 3.5 million, is bordered by Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia.

An almost landlocked country, which has a small strip of coast on the Adriatic Sea.

In 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell, the first Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed, known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

During World War Two, Yugoslavia was forcibly occupied by Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy.

Two distinct resistance movements sprung up: the █etniks, seeking a return to monarchy, and the Partisans, fighting for an anti-fascist, pro-communist Yugoslavia.

Leading the Partisans was Joseph Broz, known as Tito.

The Partisans were victorious and a new Yugoslavia was formed, with Tito serving as President For Life.

Yugoslavia consisted of six equal republics: Croatia, Slovenia, Sebia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia.

Each one had their own parliament and president.

The motto became “Brotherhood and Unity.” Yugoslavia's communism was unique in the world.

It was considered freer and not associated with the Soviet Union.

Tito masterfully played both the Eastern and Western powers to his advantage.

And Yugoslavia became a prosperous nation.

After Tito's death, the union started to crumble into a prolonged, painful breakup.

And by the late ‘80s, the stage was set for the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

After Slovenia successfully seceded relatively peacefully, an onslaught of conflict and wars continued through 1995.

This former Yugoslav republic has 3 official languages.

And thanks to the 1995 Dayton Agreement, a tripartite presidency: one Croatian, one Serbian, and one Bosnian Muslim rotating positions every eight months.

If you're not already confused, as I was going in, the country is divided into two semi-autonomous entities.

No, not Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are the geographical remnants of historical kingdoms.

Rather, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska, each with its own President and Prime Minister.

With separate borders, different alphabets, flags and leaders, to me, these two entities feel very much like separate countries.

If you have ever watched a marathon of movies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, you may have noticed that many of the films are about the 1990s war.

Going into Bosnia to engage with the filmmakers, I had no desire to dwell on the infamous war that raged in the ‘90s.

Surely everyone's tired of it.

I decided, this will NOT be another war film.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!

Ooh, we█ll give you money, you have camera!

How did you first fall in love with cinema?

And when did you know that you wanted to become a filmmaker?

How did that process happen?

I actually didn't want to be filmmaker for years.

It was never my plan.

I thought I█m going to be, you know, professional sports woman.

I was actually playing lots of different sports.

I was pretty good at it.

And then I broke all of my bones So I realized that I will have to do something else.

And, I actually started writing while I was still a kid.

I remember, I was maybe 7-years-old, and I started writing these inspirational poems about brushing your teeth.

I spent, yeah, for a child, enormously long time without my mom, who used to read to me before the sleep.

And when she was not there, I started telling stories to myself.

I'm kind of a modern storyteller, and I think that the film is the best place for telling stories.

[Stephanie█s voice] Arriving in Sarajevo, a quote Tina had written to me stuck in my head.

She said, “Sarajevo is such a beautiful little city, and it suffered a lot.

And I feel a great responsibility to give credit to the city that made me who I am every time I do anything creative.

I never before considered having responsibility to a place.

I was intrigued by this concept.

And her words spiraled through my thoughts as I walked down the river over bridge after bridge, past the corner where Franz Ferdinand jump started the Great War.

Scooted my way through the labyrinth of Old Town, passing mosques, churches, and synagogues.

Libraries battered and rebuilt.

Reminders of the past with glimmers of hope peeking through the spirited crowds of people going about their daily business.

Sarajevo was long considered the Jerusalem of Europe for its multicultural population living side by side.

Today, Sarajevo is divided by not some invisible lines: east and west.

The two entities now divide the city in half.

People still talk of the “before.” Meaning, before 1992, when the Bosnian War took root; or before 1984, Sarajevo█s Olympic last hurrah; or before 1980, when Tito died.

Perhaps even before World War two, or before the Ottomans occupied the city in the 1400s.

Sarajevo has been through a lot.

And many of her inhabitants long for “the before.” Sarajevo is a spirited city.

It is a city with a soul.

And many Sarajevans we met along the way spoke of their love for Sarajevo because of its multicultural background and its creative spirit.

As I navigated these streets, which seem to speak for multiple generations and backgrounds, I wondered, how does Tina█s relationship with Sarajevo affect the decisions she makes in her own filmmaking?

How does this great city inspire her?

[Tina] Sarajevo is the biggest influence on me as a person.

Your city, in a way, gives birth to you.

And you have to have some kind of responsibility for the place that, you know, gave you space to grow.

Even if it's not a gratitude, even you can say, it's like “my town destroyed me.” You have to come and say, “okay, that's my town that's destroyed me.” [Stephanie█s voice] Sometimes I watch a film that surprisingly sneaks into my subconscious.

The 1972 Yugoslav-era flick “Walter Defends Sarajevo” is one such film.

This movie seems to capture the heart and soul of Sarajevo.

Walter is the codename for a real life, much celebrated WWII partisan resistance fighter, Vladimir Peric.

Over time, Walter has become a sort of symbol of Sarajevo.

Perhaps as a result of this film.

In the movie, a Nazi captain is searching for Walter, the leader of the resistance.

The German officer has been searching for over a year, yet has never found him despite deploying a fake Walter spy into the Partisan ranks.

At the end of the film, the Nazi captain tells his superior as he looks over a viewpoint of Sarajevo, “I finally know who Walter is.” He points to the city below.

“This is Walter.” To learn more about Walter, I visited Film Center Sarajevo, which houses a museum exhibit dedicated to this landmark film.

I geeked out over the life sized statues of the lead actor and his director.

The Film Center Sarajevo houses and preserves 80 feature films and over 500 docs and experimentals.

The Free Cinema Walter screens these archival films to encourage young artists to know their cinema heritage and continue making movies.

Tina and I sat down with the center's director, Ines; along with Faruk, a film director and teacher at the Sarajevo Film Academy.

[Stephanie] As filmmakers, how do you like to see Sarajevo represented on film?

How do you like to use it in your films?

And why, if at all, is it special to you, or important to you?

Many of us, spent the war here.

And this is what, how to say, you have scars for this period and make very big... [Tina] ... impressions.

[Ines] Impressions, yes.

So we'll always come again on this topic, because we are not happy and satisfied with all this life after the war.

Especially, I have two films dedicated to families who lived in Sarajevo.

I know what they lived in these years after the war.

[Faruk] Yeah, what Ines said about the war, it█s something that connects you in a way, but maybe connects you, same as abusive family, to a city.

For me, Sarajevo was always, that has to do with my character too, sort of a trap.

More and more, we are dilapidated of any, intellectual or spiritual content.

And I think this is a huge problem.

Unfortunately, I think Sarajevo is gone in a way that, actually, I try to present in my second film, which is “With Mom.” And in that film, that kind of a cancer that a main character has, is also a cancer that society has.

It's a normal thing, and I think Sarajevo just basically died.

And after that, there is no justice.

So for me, it's all a sort of an what happened after the war, because that is my reality.

But I wanted to show it in a different reality.

So I used long shots and I use this very silent scenes usually.

And of course, there is a ton of something that doesn't have in Bosnian movies, and that█s sex!

I mean, my film has an excessive amount of sex.

I said, “yeah, people here are actually having sex, and they eat, and they think bad things about, the closest relation to them.” And it's difficult.

It's a live people.

[film clip in Bosnian] [Stephanie█s voice] Less than a decade after the celebrated Winter Olympics, from 1992 to 1995, Bosnian Serb forces seeking to take control of the land surrounded the city of Sarajevo and maintained a nearly four year siege on the city.

Sarajevo was pounded by shelling from the surrounding mountains.

Its only access to the outside world was via a secret tunnel under the airport runway.

The shelling and additional sniper fire, often taking place down the infamous Sniper█s Alley, killed at least 10,500 Sarajevans and wounded over 50,000 more.

Tina was six years old when the war started.

She has vivid memories of this time, which play heavily into her film work.

As children, Tina and her sister played outside their apartment block in Dobrinja.

After narrowly missing a sniper's bullet who aimed at civilians from the nearby bridges, Tina's mother, who worked for the Yugoslav Army, managed to get Tina and her sister evacuated on the last Yugoslav Army helicopter that flew civilians out of Sarajevo.

The bridges in Sarajevo are beautiful, plentiful, and in wartime, especially dangerous.

As I walk across these bridges, I try to imagine what it was like growing up as a kid in Sarajevo.

In 1992, while Tina was dodging snipers.

I was playing soccer and going to summer camp.

It doesn't seem fair.

If things were reversed, how different would my life be?

Would I still have become a writer and director like Tina?

Would my themes be focused elsewhere?

I wondered if Tina's wartime experiences and the memories it shaped, helped form her into the strong, resilient, determined individual she is today.

[Stephanie] Can you sum up what you thought of Sarajevo when you were a kid and were first there, and then when you left, and then when you came back?

Well, I loved Sarajevo before the war.

And we actually now separate time into two parts, like before and after the war.

So the time before in my memory, has a taste of Coca Cola ice cream.

Most of my memories from that period are just little pieces that are enormously happy.

And, you know, without any care in the world.

So it was really some kind of a peaceful, happy place.

And then, you know, there is just at one point, it became loud and you had to sleep in your hallway because there are no windows there.

When we came back, busses from Serbia still couldn't enter Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

So because we came from Belgrade, we had to stop at this...

This place, it's called Vraca.

To make everything funnier... And there is this big monument to the Second World War fighters and of course, peace and brotherhood and unity and everything.

And then you would stop there, because, you know, unity was not that popular anymore.

And my aunt came to pick us up.

We entered from the hill, on foot, into the city, you know, carrying all the things and everything.

And then it really looked like a post-apocalyptic movie.

So it was a really, really, shockingly big change.

And when I look at Sarajevo today, you know there are only some few marks that that happened.

And I think that Sarajevo is very lucky for that.

We came to the point where we actually live in some kind of peace again.

It is very far from peace that we used to have.

But I think that, you know, we still lack that unity that really defined us for a very long time.

[Stephanie█s voice] Tina's directorial debut, “Orpheus,” came about as a challenge set by a prominent Bosnian producer who was interested in producing a feature film that Tina wrote.

“Orpheus” was an exercise for Tina to practice her filmmaking chops, directing alongside a professional crew.

The result is a heart pounding four minute film, the anxiety of which leaves me nearly breathless.

At first glance, “Orpheus” is a joyful story of four young children playing in the snow.

Until you realize that everything we're experiencing is through the point of view of a sniper.

We hear him load his gun.

Light a cigarette.

Shoot the gun.

Load the gun again.

And repeat.

[Gun is loaded and fired] [Gun is re-loaded] [Gun is fired.]

[Tina] The Orpheus is a very short.

It is four minutes long, and follows one moment in the life of kids during the war, who are playing sniper.

So it was actually that particular bridge was famous for that.

One day, a girl was shot.

A girl was shot.

She ended up in hospital, she was wounded in her leg.

She was walking on crutches after that.

It's like, while she was waiting for her leg to heal.

And then, she was out with her friends.

She came to the bridge and she started running over, teasing the sniper on her crutches.

And you know, it is a real life story.

It really happened.

And I was thinking like, what kind of a crazy person you have to be?

It was telling so much about people from Sarajevo.

You know, it was some proof of, you know, that unbreakable spirit of people.

Where you will not let anybody else dictate the way you live.

That film actually ended up in competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival and went to 25 festivals from Mexico to North Korea.

[film clip in Bosnian] [Stephanie█s voice] Tina█s second short film, “Just Another Day” Examines a 20-year-old woman as she internally processes the death of her father on the day of her best friend's birthday.

Through this film, we see Tina as an emerging writer-director, continue to navigate difficult human emotions through a stark visual language.

Like her characters, Tina, too, is finding her voice as a filmmaker.

[Tina] In the start I was actually dealing with things that were very close to home.

My first two shorts, you know, one was shot in front of my home.

I see the bridge from my window.

And the other one was shot in my home.

So, you know, it was very close.

It was very intimate.

It was completely about me.

And then, as I grew up a bit, different things started being inspirational.

So it's like, I think that now I'm opening, that the time came to open up for, you know, new inspirations.

It doesn't mean that I'm not go- ing to do stories about Sarajevo and in Sarajevo.

But it just means that, you know, I can feel that I opened up a bit.

[Tina] So, welcome to my neighborhood.

This is Dobrinja.

And actually, this is the place where I spent biggest part of my life living.

I moved here when I was around one-year-old.

[Stephanie] Wow.

[Tina] And, I spent all my time since the beginning of the war here.

And, like, it took us several years to get our apartment back after the war.

But we are here again since 2000.

So it is very cozy to me.

And kind of a safe place.

Dobrinja is a residential area.

It was built after the Olympic Games.

It was...

It is still considered part of the Olympic neighborhood, But actually, that█s the place where I shot my first film.

[Stephanie] Your second film, I find some of the subtleties to be powerful, and especially the moment at the end where she just makes a very simple decision, but you see her moving forward in her life as a result of a simple decision.

And I think it's played pretty nicely.

Yeah.

But, you know, there are parts.

For example, part of this was actually shot here.

And a bit further on this road going by the river.

So yeah, the second film was shot here too, But, there is a point where she actually comes to the tree and tries to break her own arm.

[Stephanie] Yeah.

And it's like people were like, “Yeah, what's that about?” And then, you know, you realize because I didn't give it enough time.

Yeah.

It's like people didn't really get the point that she's actually trying to, you know, make herself feel something.

Because the whole point was, you know, if you feel pain, then you're feeling.

And the whole idea was to make an atmosphere of that bubble, from which she cannot run away.

She's completely stuck in the bubble and can't feel a thing.

[film clip in Bosnian] [Stephanie█s voice] Tina and I took the cable car up to Trebevi█.

To the abandoned bobsled track of the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, which many Sarajevans now see as Yugoslavia's last hurrah before the siege of Sarajevo devastated the city, with attacks originating from these same mountains.

Do you think that growing up in Sarajevo and elsewhere throughout the region influenced your becoming a filmmaker, or, do you think that you are a a certain kind of filmmaker based on those experiences?

I think that living in different places, especially during such a difficult time, actually formed me as a person and formed a lot of my opinions that are probably unchangeable, that are fixed parts of my character.

And parts that even when they are not best for me, I don't want to change them.

It's like they define me, and that I think are very important.

And for sure then it affects the films that I do in the way in which I do them.

Because, you know, your films are about your thoughts and your feelings, and when you combine those two things, both of them come from your experiences and your education.

And what in you do you feel is fixed?

I think that one of the things that I learned is that you should let go anybody that wants to leave, and that's...

I think that we would all live in a much happier world if anytime somebody want to leave, you told him, “there are the doors.” “Enjoy yourself.” No grudges.

It█s like, “let me know if you want to hang out again.” Because, like I'm watching what's happening in Yugoslavia and it's really a political thing, also, not personal.

You know, we had the war.

A bloody war.

A really awful, awful war.

It's like cruelties that happened are, you know, for me, are still unimaginable.

And I meet with them every day.

And now, you know, more and more, you know, we are doing things together.

The only thing that we should have been able to say is like, “Okay, now who wants to go?” “You can leave.” And then wait and see.

And everybody would come together again.

It would just be, you know, “union of the countries.” Welcome to European Union.

How has the society coped over the years since the war?

And you personally, too?

I mean, do you see it evolving?

And, it seems like, how can you, one ever move on from something that big and yet, you know, we must, we're a society.

We have to continue on.

Yeah.

We█re still living it.

And I don't know how you stop it.

I really I don't have an answer, but we are still living it.

And, you know, whenever I am in Sarajevo, because my life is now in two locations at the same time.

When I'm in Sarajevo, I'm living it.

It's really, really difficult to step back.

And, you know, we tried to keep alive kind of a memory.

You know, we are trying to have process that will help us this time, not to forget what happened, because that's kind of what we did after the Second World War.

And I think that lots of our problems actually came from that.

You know, for the sake of the unity, it was better to forget some things.

And then some things are impossible to be forgotten, and they show up as demons decades later.

[Stephanie█s voice] The cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Cinema of Yugoslavia, are inevitably intertwined.

As one of the six republics of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia was a favorite destination for Yugoslavia's prominent film industry.

Yugoslav President Joseph Broz Tito was a huge cinephile.

It is said that he adored John Wayne and Hollywood westerns.

Tito had a heavy hand in the industry.

He carefully reviewed screenplays, even giving feedback on the scripts before greenlighting the projects.

The films of Yugoslavia were essential in helping to craft the narrative, and dare I say, “mythology” of the new Yugoslav identity.

Helping to create a Yugoslav historical narrative through entertaining storytelling.

The first feature to come out of Bosnia was the 1951 World War Two Partisan flick, “Major Bauk.” Partisan films became THE thing in Yugoslav cinema history.

Several of Yugoslavia's most famous Partisan war films were shot in Bosnia, utilizing their mountain scenery and their high end production studio, Bosna Film.

Movies shot at Bosna Film include “Battle of Sutjeska,” which stars Richard Burton as a young Josip Broz Tito.

My Favorite, “Walter Defends Sarajevo,” and the larger than life “Battle of Neretva,” a Hollywood co-production which brought in Yul Brynner, and Orson Welles, and earned a 1970 Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

The story behind the filming of “Battle of Neretva” is almost stranger than fiction.

Like “Sutjeska,” the story of the film is Tito█s own, as a World War Two Partisan war hero, further helping to frame the origin story of Yugoslavia.

Neretva is the story of the wounded.

Tito himself was wounded in this battle.

And by making this film, Tito is reminding audiences that he recovered to eventually save the day and free the people, creating a communist utopia.

Tina and I, along with her fashion designer friend Milan, visited the Herzegovinian town of Jablanica.

to visit the actual bridge on the Neretva, which was blown up multiple times.

Once, intentionally by the World War Two Partisans to serve as a decoy for the invading German army.

After the Germans retreated, thinking the Partisans would no longer advance, the Yugoslavs rebuilt a small bridge to carry their wounded soldiers across to safety.

This is also the general plot of the movie.

Decades later, infamously in Bosnia's cinema history, the bridge was blown up for the recreation of the film.

To make this onscreen battle feel as authentic as possible.

Tito approved the blowing up of the bridge, and even provided Army tanks and explosives to aid the movie production.

The kicker of it all is that the footage from this explosion never made it into the film.

Legend has it, there was so much dust from the explosion that the cameras couldn't capture the important action of the sequence, with all the smoke and dust covering the lenses.

As a result, the crew rebuilt a model of the bridge and reshot the explosion in a studio.

Remarkably, Pablo Picasso created the film's poster only the second time he ever painted for film art, And rumor has it, Pablo did so only in exchange for a case of Yugoslavia's best wine.

Tina's friend Milan is a fashion designer who has designed some dresses for Tina to wear at her film premieres.

He was the costume designer on a short she had just finished writing and directing, “Heart of Stone.” “Heart of Stone” is a reflective black and white film, beautifully shot, dealing with themes of family, memory, loss, and confronting one's own guilt.

[film clip in Bosnian.]

[Stephanie█s voice] Back in Sarajevo, I was feeling the spirit of “Walter” everywhere.

So much so that I stumbled upon a pub, Walter Ego, and had the good fortune to meet the bar's owner, Samra, a humanitarian aid worker from Sarajevo, who named her watering hole after Vladimir Peri█, the symbol, which encompasses her nostalgia for a more united Sarajevo.

Samra showed me around the city she loves, taking me to her favorite shops in the Old Quarter, treating me to █evapi, and sharing memories of growing up in Sarajevo.

Samra was a teenager during the siege.

She fondly remembers attending the first editions of the Sarajevo Film Fest, which remarkably originated during the war.

Samra showed me the place where it all began: a basketball court surrounded by apartment blocks.

She explained that the teenagers and young adults would gather at this spot, because it was surrounded by big buildings; strong structures away from the snipers who shot down the main drag.

One day, someone brought a projector and started screening films.

Thus, the festival was born.

For Samra and the others who gathered here, this was a safe haven and a pleasant escape during difficult times.

I talked with Faruk about the origins of the festival, as he attended and participated in the Sarajevo Film Festival since the very beginning.

[Faruk] Well, it was in 1993.

Ninety-three.

There was a war festival.

During the war, these things were magical.

Although probably they were not very good, but it was magical.

And it's a bit blurry that time, of all bad alcohol we had to drink, but, [Tina] You had to?

We had to.

We had to.

There was no other way.

But on the other hand, that was the beginning, this very modest beginnings.

In ‘95, I remember, Alfonso Cuarón actually brought his “Little Princess,” brought 35 millimeter copies, himself, through the mountain.

He didn't fly.

He actually brought that copy.

And it was really amazing.

We actually watched, “Pulp Fiction” then, and “Reservoir Dogs.” So it was a sort of, “coming to life,” in a sense, of what is going on in a film.

“White Balloon,” by Jafar Panahi.

Really wonderful films.

So we had this amazing adventure.

I learned how films can be from the festival.

And I think this is why I'm so grateful.

Sarajevo Film Festival is still a kind of an entry point for most of our younger filmmakers.

In a way, for better or worse, they were very important for making our film industry at all.

[Stephanie█s voice] It could be said that Danis Tanovi█ led Bosnia's 21st century cinema revival.

His 2001 “No Man's Land” was the first film from the former Yugoslavia countries to win an Oscar.

“No Man's Land” takes place in 1993 during the Bosnia-Serbia war.

A Bosnian, and a Bosnian Serb fighter, find themselves trapped in the same trench, with a third Bosnian soldier who is stuck dying on the top of a landmine set to explode.

What compels me about this film is that there are no false pretenses towards the situation.

While there are few brief moments of connection between these two opposing fighters, they certainly do not become friends by the end, and their enemy status remains at large through the entire film.

Surprisingly, Tanovi█ throws in a lot of humor throughout, most poignantly through the use of language.

The enemy soldiers speak the same language, while the so-called peacekeepers do not.

So the enemies end up translating for each other to communicate with the peacekeepers.

The movie gives one pause to consider who is fighting whom, and why?

Almost every film I've seen from Bosnia is in one way, shape or form, a war film.

From World War Two to today.

The exceptions are extremely rare.

Surely filmmakers are writing about what they know.

And the prominent filmmakers to emerge in the 2000s, including Danis Tanovi█, Aida Begi█, and Jasmila █bani█ were from the generation who directly experienced the war.

Part of this trend is also because filmmakers will not get funding, nor selected at prestigious international festivals, without the themes that audiences, fests, and funders expect from a filmmaker in Bosnia.

And that is to rehash the war.

The 2021 Oscars are proof of this, as a Bosnian war film, “Quo Vadis, Aida?”, a harrowing depiction of the Srebrenica genocide, was one of five films nominated for Best International Feature Film.

In the movie, Aida is an English teacher working as a translator for the UN, who hopelessly fights tooth and nail to try to save her husband and kids from the Bosnian Serb forces who violently invade the designated UN “Safe Zone” to carry out the Srebrenica massacres.

Anyone who remembers these events, knows that this story does not end well.

While “Quo Vadis, Aida?” did quite well at the box office in Bosnia, and screened to international acclaim, we came across a variety of strong opinions towards the film ranging from those who absolutely despise it, to others who appreciated the realism of the film as a brutal moment in time that is necessary to remember.

For me personally, the film had me on the edge of my seat, and shocked me for all the reasons one should be shocked.

That this is a true story of a horrific genocide carried out by humans who planned it out and knew what they were doing.

After viewing “Quo Vadis, Aida?” I decided to travel to Srebrenica and visit the Genocide Memorial Center to see these records for myself.

A small act towards the historic imperative to “never forget.” In 1993, the UN had declared Srebrenica a safe zone to protect the local population from the Bosnian Serb forces who create a siege around it.

In July 1995, tens of thousands of refugees who were fleeing attacks targeting the Muslim population of nearby villages arrived at the Poto█ari UN Headquarters near Srebrenica for safe keeping.

The UNPROFOR forces proved impotent, and failed horrifically to protect these civilians.

Over the course of just a few days, Bosnian Serb forces entered the safe zone.

Separated men and women.

And in a direct act of ethnic cleansing, viciously murdered more than 8000 men and boys, while countless women and girls were raped.

[Tina] I think that war films are very important for the cultural memory.

It's not so much about informing the wider world.

I think that, you know, in the big picture, the wider world doesn't care.

To be honest.

You know, okay, people will see it.

[Stephanie] They should.

[Tina] They will be shocked.

[Stephanie] They should care!

[Tina] They will be shocked.

They will cry a bit.

[Tina] But no, but we are... [Stephanie] You're right.

[Tina] You know, in today's world, you know, there is...

There are so many shocking stories.

There is so much sadness.

That we actually became a kind of the tragedy junkies.

You get this pop culture sadness that lasts for 50 seconds, and then, yeah, you, you have to wash your hair.

So I didn't think that those kinds of films are important for the wider audience.

I don't think those kind of stories are important for America.

I think those kinds of stories are important for us.

And when I say “us,” I think of the whole former Yugoslavia, because that's our you know, that's something that we went through together.

In a way, Srebrenica is our common tragedy, even though we don't have anything with it.

It's like you became such an important part of our common history, that as a collective, we feel the pain for it.

We talked so much about it through the years and everything, and still, there is so much pain and not enough understanding.

And I think that films help.

You know, film, films have their position in dealing with trauma.

They have their position in building cultural memory, and we have to make them.

That's what I am, you know, studying for my PhD.

What I'm trying to find out, you know, where is the limit?

How much of them do we do we need to make?

And, how we falsify our history through making them?

[Stephanie] Your PhD is studying memory through these war films.

And I was wondering if it was a therapeutic process for you, or if it was traumatic to revisit some of these war films over and over and over again.

[Tina] You know, it can be a bit traumatizing.

But I think it is very revealing.

And I think, having an opportunity to see what stories people are, you know, filming about in which way, and why, is something that can help you understand the way of thinking.

And I mentioned that, you know, from my childhood that I have that moment of seeing how history books were changed.

And I think that one of my big question is, how do we actually, how we do change the history?

The thing with me is that, you know, I'm a person who tends to rationalize things.

And I need anything that happens, all the emotions that spark up in anybody, and that includes me.

Like I need to, to find an answer that will be rational for me enough to say, “Okay, that functions.” Even if it functions in its irrationality.

And I think that that part that, you know, breakup of Yugoslavia is something that I don't fully understand.

That is something that is kind of bugging me when I think about my life and what I was introduced to in different parts of life.

Why did this have to happen that way?

And what were people really thinking?

When you go around, you know, most of the people tell you stories from which it seems that war shouldn't have ever happened.

But it happened.

So I think that going through all these films, and at one point, I had a list of 150 films that were possibly getting into the analysis.

Going through those films, I think I get an opportunity to try and rationalize what happened with the breakup of Yugoslavia.

And in that way, I think that it can actually be helpful for me.

To, you know, close this chapter to say, “OK,” “This is the explanation.” And I do believe that artistic, you know, truth; artistic history, actually, is more truthful than historic history, because it comes from the singular experience that you share.

And when you connect lots of singular experiences, you can see a bigger picture.

And history is written by the winners.

And in our case, as we don't have a winner, it█s lots of little histories of people who think they won.

[Stephanie] So what types of stories are important, do you think, for a modern Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Well, anything that is personal and honest.

I think we, I think every filmmaker who does her or his film following what really interests him, or her, that feels passionately about, they will make great films.

[Stephanie] What is your ultimate goal or desire, or your dream for your life as a filmmaker?

[Tina] The idea of my future life, while I was studying, you know, and you have these... You know you close your eyes and think: That's how I would like it to look like.

It was always to... actually spend almost all of my time writing, and then to... go, you know, on the film sets from time to time, because I like craziness of the film set.

So, in that ideal world, I would probably, you know, write all the time and then from time to time direct something.

But the problem is that, you know, you get those dreams about your future when you're younger and then you start growing up and start liking things.

So I like teaching at the Academy.

I really, I love my work at the Academy.

I think it is such a privileged position to be able to talk to young people, to see what they are thinking, or not thinking.

[Stephanie] And what do you hope for the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

[Tina sighs heavily] [Tina] You know, when I hope, I just hope everything is going to be okay.

And then I always remember my psychology professor from high school, who told me, “Everything that happens is the best thing that could have happened.” So just, you know, enjoy it and go with it.

So I just hope we will learn how to live.

Maybe that's, you know, the biggest hope for the future.

Like to live in present and not think about the past or the future.

(♪) traditional Sevdah song in Bosnian (♪) [Stephanie█s voice] After spending time in Sarajevo with Tina, meeting an array of beautiful, spirited people: Samra, Faruk, Ines, Milan; it is easy to understand the love affair many Sarajevans have with their city.

The saying goes, “never forget.” One may wish to move on, but then what?

What happens to the memories?

What happens to the truth?

The warning signs for the future to avoid the same devastating mistakes of years past?

There is a tug of war paradox that pulls at this city.

It is important for the world to never forget.

History repeats itself, yet society needs to heal.

So how can a population move on and still remember?

Sarajevo is a city of contrasts.

It is an enchanting city because of its blend of old and new.

East and west.

While architectural structures have been painstakingly rebuilt, reminders of the war abound.

The “Roses of Sarajevo.” Red splats of paint on buildings and sidewalks to designate where the blood had been spilled.

And most of all, the faces of the people, some of whom won't forget.

The legacy of the 1990s is still very much a part of films being made here, life being lived.

The art produced.

And it is echoed in the sentiments of the music being sung.

(♪) Traditional Sevdah music (♪) For better or worse, this is still a war film.

And Sarajevo lives on.

To learn more about the Cinema Nomad filmmakers and dive deeper into the exciting world of global cinema, Visit our website, CinemaNomad.TV [Steadman█s footprints] “Steadee on!” [film slate closes]