08/03/2006

Amid strong emotions, collective soul-searching and the spirit of reconciliation, the Serbian premiere of Grbavica [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Barbara Albert
interview: Jasmila Zbanic
film profile] – by young Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic, winner of the Golden Bear at last month’s Berlin Film Festival – was a huge success in Belgrade. The film tells the story of a mother, a victim of ethnic rape from the horrific siege of Sarajevo by the Serbs.

Received with some uncertainty, against the backdrop of grumbling from several pseudo-patriotic groups and denied distribution in the Republika Srpska (the Serb-governed political entity within Bosnia and Hercegovina), the Austrian/German/Bosnian/Croatian co-production was, however, screened with full honours in Serbian capital, in the main theatre of the Sava Centar, at the end of the most important international film festival in Belgrade. The result: a packed theatre and a standing ovation from the over 2,000 audience members for the director and the lead actors, all of whom were sitting in the front row.

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This finale does justice to the controversy set off in past weeks by several militant-nostalgic remarks against the film and especially against Mirjana Karanovic, one of Serbia’s most beloved actresses, who was accused of helping to spread "anti-Serbian propaganda" for having accepted the role of the young Bosnian rape victim. A controversy that had moreover already stirred up a response from the majority of Belgrade’s film critics, who were enthusiastic about Zbanic’s film, and which ultimately only ended up being a short-lived commotion outside the screening, made by a dozen young thugs who tried to disrupt the evening with their shouted slogans and t-shirts with pictures of the notorious Serbian-Bosnian leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.