Celluloid War Wounds at Sarajevo Film Festival

This year’s Sarajevo Film Festival will feature several films about war, both in the Balkans and abroad, a subject which has become an annual theme at the event.

Conflict will again be among the themes of this year’s festival, which opened on Friday and will showcase 214 movies from 57 countries.

Among them is ‘At Least We Survived’, a short film written and directed by Amela Cuhara, which focuses on the story of a former prisoner, played by Bosnian actor Ermin Sijamija, who returns to Sarajevo to find his wife and daughter.

In the film, he finds out the address where his wife now lives, but when she opens the door, she no longer recognises him.

“This is a good story, the lives of people and the consequences of war are told in 15 minutes,” Sijamija told BIRN.

He said that conflict was not exhausted as a subject for the Sarajevo festival.

“Unfortunately, the war is our not-so-distant past and its consequences are our present,” said Sijamija.

War wounds are also the subject of another film being screened at the festival entitled ‘Finding Family’, which tells a story of a young man from Sarajevo who is abandoned by his family and later finds out that they were involved in attacking the city during the 1990s siege.

The film deals with the issue of identity and belonging, both personal and ethnic.

Also on show at the festival is ‘Apollo: First War Cinema’, a documentary about a group of movie enthusiasts who opened the first conflict-zone cinema in Sarajevo, which became a symbol of survival during the siege.

The festival continues until August 24.