Wednesday 27 April
10am, 2:30pm, 5pm, 7:30pm
Directed by Jasmila Zbanic
Drama
Bosnia, Subtitles
101 minutes
Bosnia, July 1995. Middle-aged Aida (Jasna Ðuričić) is an English teacher in the small mountain town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army ignores a formal UN ultimatum and begins a series of round-ups and brazen shelling, Aida and her family find themselves among over 30,000 besieged citizens attempting to shelter in a UN peacekeeper-operated military base on the outskirts of town, designed to house only a few thousand. Aida’s skills as a translator enable her to eventually bargain her husband and two sons inside, literally under the wire.
There, within the so-called safe zone, the harried and frantic Aida becomes party to the negotiations and to crucial information. While the support the UN can provide is crumbling, the situation intensifies with the arrival of vainglorious army commander Ratko Mladic (Boris Isaković), accompanied by his own camera crew.
This study in chaos and calculation not only makes for harrowingly compelling viewing, but it also exposes the apathy of an international community that simply turned the other way. – David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
The achievement of Zbanic’s compelling, deeply moving film is to give faces and personalities to the victims and towering above them all is the character of Aida as she tenaciously fights to save her men; Duricic’s performance in the role is unforgettable. – David Stratton, The Australian