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Winner of the Un Certain Regard award at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Aida Begic’s Children of Sarajevo (Djeca, 2012) is a tightly-focused drama, portraying life in contemporary Bosnia from the point of view of the war orphans now reaching maturity. Marija Pikic plays Rahima, a 23-year-old woman who, after a misspent youth, has found solace and direction in Islam, practising the Hajib and wearing a headscarf.

Rahima works as a chef in an expensive restaurant run by Rizo (Aleksandar Seksan), a shady character with a bad temper. She also lives with her 14-year-old brother Nedim (Ismir Gagula), in a rundown suburb rife with graffiti. Rahima has some allies – the workers at the restaurant bicker and joke, but they obviously care for each other – but she is fiercely independent and someone who has fought all her life. However, when Nedim gets into a fight at school, things begin to unravel. The other boy involved in the fracas is the son of a government minister and the school is demanding Rahima replace the broken iPhone which was damaged in the incident. It also turns out that Nedim has been missing school and is involved in some serious criminal activity.

Pikic is brilliant as Rahima. She has the deliberate movements of someone who works a double shift and then comes home to find everything to do. Her former life is brought against her all the time, and yet at the same time no one gives her any credit for her reformed life of discipline and stoic self-sacrifice. Gagula’s Nedim is almost the dictionary definition of the sulky teenager, ever ready with the cocky reply, but never lending his sister a hand and constantly criticising and blaming her. There is one moment of tenderness when Rahima suggests she play Gran Turismo with him, but this is almost inevitably cut short.

Bosnia is a country of huge divisions, as exemplified by the contrast between the restaurant and the kitchen, the luxury of the minister’s home and the poverty of Rahima’s apartment. The police are in the service of those in power, and likewise the headmistress of Nedim’s school immediately knows who the troublemaker is based on background. The social worker is also grimly unsympathetic, telling Nedim that at least he will grow up to be a better person than his sister did.

The war appears in old video footage which shows a population trying to get on with normal lives even as the siege takes its bloody toll. Children of Sarajevo’s opening depicts a children’s performance with the sound of gunfire and explosions coming from nearby, and the psychological reverberations of the conflict can be heard in the exaggerated soundtrack.

It is to Begic’s credit that with Children of Sarajevo she manages to give the viewer an intimation of hope and optimism at the end of what is otherwise a fairly grim portrait of day to day existence in the Bosnian capital. Begic does this without resorting to a Raining Stones (1993) twist of fate, or the intervention of some third party. Indeed, many of Rahima and Nedim’s problems remain unresolved and threats are imminent, but they are together and they are still surviving long after the world and Bosnia itself has forgotten them.

1.39GB | 1h 29mn | 991×536 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/14690EA35CED4D2/Aida_Begic_-_(2012)_Djeca.mkv
or
https://tezfiles.com/file/f10c45c9e3b24/Aida_Begic_-_%282012%29_Djeca.mp4

Language:Bosnian
Subtitles:English

The post Aida Begic – Djeca AKA Children of Sarajevo (2012) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The first Bosnian film to win the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival’s International Critics Week focuses on six women living in a small village one year after the war has ended. All of the men (including male children) have been rounded up and killed by the Serbian army. The surviving women work hard to keep the village’s only industry, jam and sauerkraut production operational. It’s grueling work to create a delicate product that the women then transport in handcarts through rough mountainous paths to sell on the roadside. We see the women raise the orphaned children left behind all the while trying to keep each other’s spirits up with games and craft projects but the fact remains, the only commonality they have is that their former middle classic lives have been transformed by tragedy. Each of them still holds out secret hope their husbands, sons and fathers somehow survived and will someday return. When two Serbian businessmen representing a commercial real estate developer show up with an offer to buy their land each woman is forced to re-examine the reality of her situation and what her priorities moving forward will be. 



Like many of the wonderful documentaries from this area (some of which my company, A Million Movies a Min ute distributes), the film contrasts of the breathtaking beauty of this area with the horrendous things its people have endured. At the start, the somewhat self-conscious diversity of the group threatens to be something akin to a Slavic United Colors of Benneton ad: a Muslim, a Christian, a bawdy dame, a thrill-seeking younger woman, an elderly woman who spends her time working the loom and a demanding, bed-ridden mother-in-law. But director Aida Begić let’s their stories unfold naturally. The film never condescends to think an audience will understand their situation by the end of the film.

1.55GB | 1h 39mn | 1009×568 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/3BCE79A453B7891/Aida_Begic_-_%282008%29_Snijeg.mkv

Language(s):Bosnian
Subtitles:English

The post Aida Begic – Snijeg AKA Snow (2008) first appeared on Cinema of the World.