Content area
Full Text
8,372. Eight thousand, three hundred and seventy-two. That is the number of fathers, grandfathers, brothers, sons, husbands, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbours and lovers Bosnian women lost during the mass murder and genocide at the hands of Ratko Mladic's Bosnian Serb Army in Srebrenica in July 1995. Jasmila Žbanic's new feature film, Quo Vadis, Aida?, conveys this devastating moment in European history from a feminist perspective, centring the weight of this ethnic cleansing on the shoulders of one female Bosnian protagonist, Aida (Jasna D strok signuričic), a middle-aged school teacher and mother who serves as an interpreter for the UN forces stationed in Srebrenica. In what seems to be just one or two hectic days filled with incessant cruelties, Aida loses everything, despite beseeching every man in charge to save her sons and husband from execution: UN generals, UN soldiers and a UN doctor, in addition to young Serbian soldiers who were her students before the war and who still respectfully call her 'teacher', despite their menacing power over her life. In Žbanic's film, Aida's feverish yet ultimately futile struggle to save her family exposes the ways in which the Serbian military and...