Quo Vadis, Aida? is a 2020 internationally co-produced wardrama film written and directed by Jasmila Žbanić. It was shown in the main competition section of the 77th Venice International Film Festival. It was selected as the Bosnian entry for the Best International Feature Film at this year’s 93rd Academy Awards.
Our founder Samir Becic was deeply moved by the movie, who’s story he’s all too familiar with “Quo vadis, Aida? I cried watching this film in the same way I cried as a young student watching Schindler’s List. This film is about the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. Why did Europeans turn a blind eye to the atrocities happening at the heart of their continent at the end of the 20th century? Why is Bosnia still not an integrated part of the European Union after surviving the only genocide on European soil since World War II?”
Why did Europeans turn a blind eye to the atrocities happening at the heart of their continent at the end of the 20th century?
— Samir Becic (@SamirBecic) February 1, 2021
Why is Bosnia still not an integrated part of the European Union after surviving the only genocide on European soil since World War II?
The scene of the movie is set in Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations, Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is on the horizon for her family and people-rescue or death? Which move should she take?
Critics are raving about the movie:
- The Guardian– “There’s a real tragic power in this almost unbearably brutal and shocking movie from writer-director Jasmila Žbanić.”
- Variety– “This is not historical revisionism, if anything, Quo Vadis, Aida? works to un-revise history, re-centering the victims’ plight as the eye of a storm of evils — not only the massacre itself, but the broader evils of institutional failure and international indifference.”
- Cineview: “As a fictionalised account of what was once described as the worst European genocide in the post-war period, Quo Vadis, Aida? is wrenching and vital in its bitter grief. As a study of political and diplomatic inertia in the face of contemporary global human tragedies, it could not be more urgent.”
