Three cities in that country – Sarajevo, Mostar, Srebrenica – offer different challenges, which arise through contact with the people and their past and present history.
Sarajevo is the capital. Memory has taken shape with contradictory reflections in the current political system, and
sparks consequent opportunities for reflection and debate.
Mostar is all about the old bridge, a symbol but also the slow-beating heart of a social and political life that fails to warm the peripheral wings of the city, still fragmented by the reality of the Croat and Muslim ghettos.
And finally Srebrenica, the city of women, the city of pain.
12.000 dead (institutionally 8.372 are recognized, but in practice 4.000 more are missing), and every year, on July 11, the great ceremony for the burial of those hundreds of bodies, which are still being found, in newly identified graves.
Hatidza Mehmedovic', the film's protagonist, is from Srebrenica, and it was immediately clear that only she, with her composed and haughty ability to embrace mourning (in the 1995 genocide she lost her only two children, her husband, her brothers, and her father), could be entrusted with the transmission of an emotional charge that is so strongly present in the author-director's affectivity.
The film was inspired by the need to become emotionally involved, with an active observational role, in the fate of certain places whose history is marked by strong dramatic events.
Bosnia was chosen because it was there that one of the most bitter wars took place, not only because of the cruelty of the bloody events, but also and above all because of the extremely serious crisis in relations within the social body, because of the extremely difficult pacification that still today struggles to reconcile the evident dissatisfactions of the various ethnic elements.
Because the theme of identity – I would say more properly that of "nationality", understood in a negative sense – still opens itself to expressions of conflict.
Because it's already possible to assess the post-war period and the resulting repercussions of the war period on culture and the economy.
For that reconstruction that is struggling to be completed, or perhaps worse, that is struggling to be “undertaken,” since the very idea of a “future” is seriously compromised.
Because there remains a need for careful reflection on the principles that form the foundation of recent democracy, evidently not inspired by the partnership between State and People, but rather confusedly descended from regulations of the past regime.
Because it is essential to welcome places of recent memory as symbols—absolutely not as "sanctuaries"—with a sentimental acceptance of the meanings that derive from them by the entire community, in their multifaceted composition.
Because in many cases, the privacy of individuals is definitively compromised, lives no longer recoverable to the fullness of life.
Because children's rights must be respected, and for them—at least for children—public education must strive to disseminate values that support the concept of an undivided world, of a single people.
All this was to be visited, to be observed with discreet and respectful curiosity to know.
The presence of Hatidza Mahmedovic' – president of the Mothers of Srebrenica, herself gravely affected by the deaths of her only two children, her husband, and their male relatives during the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995 – brings to the fore the truth of a tragedy of chilling magnitude: beyond the grave losses caused by the conflict in every city and district, affecting all ethnic groups involved, in the Srebrenica area alone, more than the 8.500 victims officially recognized by the Hague Tribunal fell at the hands of the Serbian army, the majority of whom were young and male. Hatidza's journey between memory and current events has allowed for the development of an emotionally resonant narrative and, despite the harshness of the subject matter, the emergence of a poetic tale.
