on Jan 4th, 2007
Will Mr. Oscar ring Bosnia one more time?
Grbavica, a movie about the 1992-196 war in Bosnia will join 2007 Oscar contenders for best foreign movies. If won, “Grbavica” will be the second Bosnian movie (the first is “No Man Land”) received one of the most coveted film awards in the world. This movie is to be released in the United States in February 16th at the Film Forum in New York under the name “Grbavica: Land of My Dreams.” [thanks bih_friend]
Why the longer name? I think it’s because no matter how meaningful the surburb Grbavica is to Bosnians and a handful of people who know about the modern Bosnia’s history, this name doesn’t mean anything to foreigners. Also, “Land Of My Dreams,” I guess, has something to do with the movie’s soundtrack song Sarajevo ljubavi moja’s lyrics: “… zelim da ti kazem sta sanjam radosti su moje i sreca tvoja. Sarajevo ljubavi moja.” It means “…I want to tell you what I dream. The pleasures are mine and happiness yours. Sarajevo love of mine.”
Read the movie sypnosis.
The film director, Jasmila Žbanic, was born in 1974 in Sarajevo and grew up behind Holiday Inn and across from Grbavica,a quarter that became the site of an internment camp. [source]
She always knew she wanted to make movies, and there were plenty of movie houses in Sarajevo, “because the regime knew movies were good for propaganda.” When everything fell apart and war raged on the streets, she took to writing stories and films. “It was important to feel that you were resisting the fascism around you…”
I saw the movie director in real life as we were both at a dinner party celebrating the Day of the Sarajevo City, April 6th. On this day, awards in many different categories health, education, services, etc. are handed out to most distinguished persons, organizations and companies contending for the awards. The school I was working at won the award for the Education category. However, I wasn’t there because of that reason as the party was only for important people among which Jasmila Zbanic was a special guest. A friend of mine wrote for a German newspaper and happened to cover the event, so he invited and gave me a press pass. Of course, shameless me wore the pass, walked in, and mingled myself with many important people in Sarajevo. (Suck I didn’t take any picture to prove it.)
Jasmila Zbanic looked exactly like her photos on the newspaper and TV, exceptionally tall, boyish, smiled a lot and seemed quite decent. She can be blunt and political as well as she criticized the division of Bosnia and expressly called for the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, Bosnian-Serb war criminals indicted by the UN during her Golden Bear’s acceptance speech .
“I want to use this opportunity to remind us all that though the war in Bosnia was over some 13 years ago, war criminals still live in Europe freely,” said Zbanic. “They’ve not been captured for organizing the rape of 20,000 women in Bosnia, killing 100,000 and for the expulsion of a million. This is Europe, and no one is interested in capturing them. I hope this film will help change your view on Bosnia.”
For this remark, “Grbavica” is un-officially banned in the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska, one of the two Bosnia’s entities, where Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are considered national heroes. Nonetheless, the movie did well on the black market there.
I remember one conversation with a former colleague who proudly mentioned “Grbavica” after it won the Berlin Golden Bear award last year. Then she brought up “No Man Land,” which won the Oscar for best fore gin movie in 2002. She said something like Bosnia made good films because it has the “substance.”
You know too well now how the “substance” came about.
Tags: BeyondSarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Film, Grbavica
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I saw Ms Zbanic at LA Film Festival few months ago. She was great, very genuine.
Hi Medo, thanks for stopping by. Do you like teh film as well?