Grbavica

Grbavica is the infamous district in Sarajevo where locals were imprisoned and tortured in Serbian encampments during the 1990s. But war ends and life goes on. Single mother Esma lives with her 12-year-old daughter Sara while struggling to make ends meet with welfare and a job as a cocktail waitress. Still haunted by the past, Esma attends group therapy sessions at the local Women’s Centre. In order to get a discount on a school excursion, Sara needs a certificate proving that her father is a shaheed, or war martyr. This apparently simple request re-opens the traumatic recent history that lurks close beneath the surface throughout this troubled region. Jasmila Zbanic’s debut feature established her as a major new voice in European cinema when it won the Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival. Grbavica is an involving and deeply-felt exploration of the way people keep on suffering even as the guns fall silent.

Grbavica is about truth, a cosmic power necessary to progress, and very much needed by society in Bosnia and Herzegovina who must strive to reach maturity

Jasmila Zbanic