Armin
D: Ognjen Svilicic, HR/D/BiH 2007,dF, 82 min.
Empathetic Father-Son Story from the Balkans
The 14-years-old Armin and his father Ibro are travelling from their little town in Bosnia to Zagreb, capital of Croatia. Ibro is taking Armin on audition for a film about war in Bosnia, produced by a German film company. For Ibro it's important that this journey ends with success. After a journey with many exertions they arrive and are confrontated with a world which rules they don`t know and can`t handle.
Behind words
D: John Burgan
Germany 2005
Do wars really end when the fighting stops? From a bunker in Berlin, through former Yugoslavia, still-divided Cyprus, cities that change names, populations and countries without moving an inch: forced migration and ethnic cleansing has marked the 20th century like no other. In Europe alone, between 80 and 100 million were driven from their homes - or worse - in the last century. How to deal with all of this collective past? Historians quibble amongst themselves and politicians conduct a dialogue of the deaf. Behind Words encounters refugees and artists across Europe searching for the difficult way between memory and forgetting. The film is made by Network Migration in Europe and Hanfgarn & Ufer Film Production.
Carla`s list
D: Marcel Schüpbach
Switzerland, 2006, 100min, in French and English with English subtitles
Filmmaker Marcel Schüpbach was given unprecedented access behind the scenes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. In an atmosphere of high tension, where everything plays out like a poker game, prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and her team relentlessly pursue notorious perpetrators of crimes against humanity, such as Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, still at large. Both Serbia and Croatia —as well as the International Community—pledge total cooperation in helping locate the suspects, but this does not seem to produce any concrete results.
Grabavica: The land of my dreams
D: Jasmila Zbanic
Bosnia 2006
Single mother Esma lives with her 12-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo’s Grbavica neighborhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the 1990s Yugoslav wars.
Unable to make ends meet with the meager government aid she receives, Esma takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub. Working all night is difficult for Esma physically and it also forces her to reluctantly spend less time with her daughter. Still haunted by violent events in her past, Esma attends group therapy sessions at the local Women’s Center. In addition to relying on her best friend Sabina, Esma also finds a kindred spirit in Pelda, a compassionate male co-worker from the nightclub.
Feisty tomboy Sara begins to put soccer aside as she develops a close friendship with classmate Samir. The two sensitive young teenagers feel a strong bond because both lost their fathers in the war. But Samir is surprised to hear Sara doesn’t know the details of her father’s noble death. Sara’s father becomes an issue when she requires the certificate proving he died a shaheed, a holy war martyr, so that she can receive a discount for an upcoming school trip. Esma claims acquiring the certificate is difficult since his body has yet to be found. Meanwhile, Esma searches desperately to borrow money to pay for Sara’s trip.
Confused Sara becomes violently upset when some classmates tease her for not being on the list of martyrs’ children. Realizing her mother has paid full price for the school trip, Sara aggressively demands the truth. Esma breaks down and brutally explains how the girl was conceived through rape in a POW camp. As painful as their confrontation is, it is Esma’s first real step toward overcoming her deep trauma. Despite Sara’s hurt, there is still an opening for a renewed relationship between mother and daughter.
No man`s land
D: Dannis Tanovic
Bosnia 2001
After various skirmishes, two wounded soldiers, one Bosnian and one Serb, confront each other in a trench in the no man's land between their lines. They wait for dark, trading insults and even finding some common ground; sometimes one has the gun, sometimes the other, sometimes both. Things get complicated when another wounded Bosnian comes to, but can't move because a bouncing mine is beneath him. The two men cooperate to wave white flags, their lines call the UN (whose high command tries not to help), an English reporter shows up, a French sergeant shows courage, and the three men in no man's land may or may not find a way to all get along.
Videoletters
D: Katarina Rejger and Eric van den Broek
Bosnia and Herzegovina/Slovenia/Macedonia/Croatia/Serbia and Montenegro (including Kosovo), 75min, 2004/2005
In Albanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian and Slovenian with English subtitles
Videoletters is a truly groundbreaking and emotionally uplifting series of twenty short documentary films. In each episode, two people of different nationalities send each other a video letter, explaining how this could have happened. In each case, they were friends, neighbors, or colleagues before the war drove them apart.
Welcome to Sarajevo
D: Michael Winterbottom
UK 1997
Based on "Natasha's Story," the 1993 memoir of ITN correspondent Michael Nicholson. Director Michael Winterbottom has fashioned a remarkable film by taking the events in Nicholson's book and interweaving them with actual footage of the siege of Sarajevo. And he's couldn't have assembled a better cast; Stephen Dillaine and Woody Harrelson give the performances of their careers (thus far) as Henderson and Flynn, and they're ably supported by Kerry Fox, Marisa Tomei, Emira Nusevic, and a charismatic, pre-ER Goran Visnjic
Mirkovic, R.: Bosniak minority in Serbia, 2008
Human Rights Documents on Refugees and Migrants
Return Process in Bosnia: Example Prijedor, 2004
Securing Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2004
Tolic, V.: Asylum Seekers and Immigration in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Human Rights Conventions Overview
Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, 2005
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951
European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, 1950
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, 1995
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965