Croatian actor, producer and director Damir Markovina first garnered attention when his mid-length hybrid documentary Deserters won the Awards for Best Central and Eastern European Documentary Film and Best Sound Design at Ji.hlava 2022. Now, his first feature-length documentary, We Shall Live Together, is set to world-premiere in the Sarajevo Film Festival's Documentary Competition (see the news). Cineuropa can now exclusively reveal the trailer for this work.

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The film tells a personal story with particular resonance on the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Agreement. Markovina's father, Roko, was a socialist member of parliament in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. A respected and widely loved public figure, he believed that, when war came, it was his moral duty to lead by example and remain in Mostar with his family, even when the city was torn apart by ethnic conflict. They were soon driven out by nationalists from their own ethnic community, who branded Roko a traitor and seized their home. Although the family eventually recovered the house, they never actually returned.

Roko’s anti-nationalist convictions and deep sense of justice led him to resist the political order taking shape around him and to vote against the Dayton Agreement. The decision made him both a symbolic figure of the Bosnian left and a pariah to the nationalist establishment. Remaining true to his principles cost him his country, his party, his city, and his home. Thirty years later, he remains resolute, living with his wife, Zina, in self-imposed exile on an island.

His choices also left a lasting fracture between him and his two sons. Like Damir, Dragan is a historian and political commentator whose work examines nationalism, memory politics, and the post-Yugoslav world. Despite visiting their father regularly, they disagree with him on almost everything, particularly his unwavering belief in a united Bosnia and Herzegovina and his refusal to reconsider the decisions that shaped their lives. Bound together by a war that never truly ended, the question is, what does it take to move forward?

Edited by Marta Bregeš and Vladimir Gojun, We Shall Live Together was produced by Tamara Babun Zovko for Wolfgang & Dolly and co-produced by Markovina for Osoba D. The now defunct Al Jazeera Balkans is listed as the film’s Bosnian co-producer, as the project won two financial awards at AJB DOC festival.

Check out our exclusive trailer below: