Bosnian war movie wins Berlin Film Festival top award

20/02/2006

"Grbavica", a movie dealing with the issue of Bosnian Muslim women raped by Serbs during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has won the Berlin Film Festival's top award, the Golden Bear.

(Independent, Irish Times - 20/02/06; RFE/RL, FENA - 19/02/20; AP, Reuters, AFP, BBC, DPA - 18/02/06; Berlin Film Festival Official Web Site; Wikipedia)

Director Jasmila Zbanic accepts her prize at the Golden Bear Award Gala as part of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday (18 February). Her film "Grbavica" won the Golden Bear for Best Film. [AFP]

"Grbavica", the first motion picture by Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic, won the Golden Bear award at the 56th Berlin Film Festival on Saturday (18 February).

A low-budget film, "Grbavica" focuses on the aftermath of the mass rapes that took place during the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). At least 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serbs during the violence, according to estimates.

Esma, played by Belgrade-born Mirjana Karanovic, is a single mother who lives in Sarajevo with her 12-year-old daughter. Sara, played by Luna Mijanovic, believes that her father died a hero's death while defending the BiH capital.

But when her school offers to take pupils on a trip free of charge, provided they could furnish a certificate proving that they are the offspring of a war hero, the girl comes to learn the truth. Esma cannot obtain the required document and eventually ends up admitting that Sara is the daughter of a Serb soldier who raped her while she was kept in a prisoner-of-war camp.

"I just want to use this opportunity to remind us all that the war in BiH was over some 13 years ago and the war criminals [former Bosnian Serb leader and his military commander] Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic still live in Europe freely," Zbanic said as she received the award. "They [have not] been captured for organising the rape of 20,000 women in Bosnia, killing 100,000 people and expelling from their houses one million."

Zbanic, 31, who wrote the screenplay, was also awarded the prize from the Ecumenical Jury and the Peace Film Prize for the promotion of human values and peace. It is the first film dealing with this aspect of the legacy of the 1992 Balkan conflicts.

"This young film director took the role of a politician and publicly showed and said what many of them would not dare to say," Bakira Hasecic, the head of the Women War Victims Association, herself the victim of rape during the war, told Reuters on Sunday. "We are completely abandoned. It is a shame that after so many years and our endless testimonies of atrocities that happened to us, there is still no law that would put a stop to our suffering. The war is not over for us."

The Berlin Film Festival, which is comparable to the festivals in Cannes and Venice, featured a total of 360 pictures from 56 countries. "Grbavica" beat out 18 other films for the top honour.

Zbanic's previous works include the documentaries "Autobiography", "Later, Later" and "It Is Night, We Are Lighting".

BiH has produced eight feature films since the end of the war, including six by debut directors that were shown at international festivals. Another BiH director, Danis Tanovic, has won a total of 42 awards for his antiwar movie "No Man's Land", including the 2002 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, as well as a Golden Globe from the Venice Film Festival in 2002 and a Golden Palm from the Cannes festival in 2001.