Redžinald Šimek
Merjem-Meri, an unambitious, 30-year-old homemaker and mother to 8-year-old girl Mila, moves back to her parental home after 10 years of marriage. Soon after, Meri realizes she is stuck in a circle of provincial rules and expectations and a complex relationship with her ambitious mother and spoiled younger brother. Her hope to get the custody of her daughter wanes from day to day because she has no chance of finding a permanent job. The only thing that makes her happy, but also makes everyone else look down on her, is participation in an audition for a film role in her neighborhood.
April 1992. Members of a large family strewn around the former Yugoslavia gather around the death bed of their elderly matriarch. She is not well, but the forecast of a family doctor that her death is a matter of minutes away proves incorrect, so the waiting stretches out for days. Relatives start bickering, playing tricks and arguing over the inheritance to be left by the old woman, especially over her large family house in Sarajevo. Despite her deteriorating health, Grandma happily joins the fray. It appears as if that might be what is keeping her alive. Family feuds and intrigues directed against one of the sisters are more important to the family than the clear, terrifying signs of an approaching cataclysm. When the scheming is finally revealed, it is too late. A war has begun in Sarajevo.
Sarajevo on 28 of June, 2014. At the Hotel Europa, the best hotel in town, the manager Omer prepares to welcome a delegation of diplomatic VIPs. On the centenary of the assassination that is considered to have led to World War I, an appeal for peace and understanding is supposed to start from here. But the hotel staff have other worries: having not been paid for months, they are planning to go on strike. Hatidza from the hotel laundry is elected strike leader even though her daughter Lamija, who works in reception, is firmly against industrial action. Meanwhile, in the sealed-off presidential suite, a guest from France rehearses a speech. Elsewhere, a television reporter conducts interviews about war and its consequences. Was Gavrilo Princip, the 1914 assassin, a criminal or a national hero? What long shadow does his deed cast into the present?
Tarik lives alone and works in the warehouse of a supermarket. He's lonely and kills time hanging around with two colleagues. New worker comes to the small shop next to the supermarket. Tarik likes her and secretly starts to draw on the glass of the shop, hidden by the night, away from the prying eyes of society in which any kind of emotion is a sign of weakness.
Nearly 20 years since the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, there are people who still live in refugee Centers, usually located on the outskirts of cities and villages. In such centers what should have been temporary has become indefinite. Collecting medicinal herbs or scraps from nearby coal mines and raising children who were born as refugees in their own country are just some aspects of the monotonous daily life of the people in Ježevci.
Thirteen European directors explore the theme of Sarajevo; what this city has represented in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo stands for today in Europe. These eminent filmmakers of different generations and origins offer exceptional singular styles and visions.
The film deals with the tragedy of the women survivors of the Srebrenica genocide, or rather, the consequences of the horrors they experienced - it is about women whose sole purpose in life is to locate the bones of their loved ones and give them a decent burial. Fifteen years later, they still want just one simple thing - the truth. As a contrast, the film deals with trivialities of modern living, obsessed with different reality shows...
