"If violence is winning over United Nations, if it is winning over human, if it is winning after we all said 'never again right after Holocaust', then what is left?," Bosnian filmmaker, Jasmila Zbanic, said in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, speaking of her recent film on the horrors of Srebrenica, 'Quo Vadis, Aida?'.
The host described Zbanic's latest film as “very powerful” and noted that it looked like “what we witnessed there.”
The film plot follows Aida, a former professor, who works as a translator for the UN Dutch Battalion, which is tasked with guarding the so-called security zone – Srebrenica.
When Mladic's troops entered the city, Aida's husband and two sons sought refuge at the UN barracks in Potocari. Aida tries to keep them there and save them.
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In an interview with CNN, Zbanic first recalled she was 20 at the time when the Srebrenica genocide happened. over two decades later she decided to make a movie about it.
“I wasn't aware immediately that I wanted to make a film but it was always like a fire in me that I wanted to do something about it,” she noted explaining how she got engaged in her most recent film achievement.
The “shock” of Srebrenica stayed with writer/director Jasmila Žbanić for years. “It was always like a fire in me that I want to do something about it.” Now, her highly acclaimed new film “Quo Vadis, Aida?” tells the story of that massacre unflinchingly. pic.twitter.com/Q5jPhBAsdK
— Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) December 18, 2020
The aim was to make a film about Srebrenica from a female perspective.
“There were a lot of war films done by men. I always feel I don't share the same feeling for spetacularity of war, I always feel the war is just banality of evil and I always see this in movies,” Zbanic explained.
“I wanted to have a female character who will lead us through the film, that people are able to be in her shoes for 130 minutes.”
Watch the full interview here.
