[ Bosnia-Herzegovina ]

Sretan Osmi Mart! Today in Sarajevo street-vendors are selling flowers at every corner of the street - it is International Women's Day (cf. the Redaktion blog and a Der Standard article on the 8th May in ex-Yugoslavia). In an article for the Inter Press Service News Agency, Vesna Peric Zimonjic reminds us that "Bosnia's rape victims [are] forgotten" and hopes that the award-winning film Grbavica will help to lift the taboo, which makes the lives of an estimated 20 000 (or more) Bosnian rape victims extremely difficult.

Grbavica, an Austrian-Bosnian-German-Croatian co-production directed by the young Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Zbanic, is currently shown every day in the huge hall of the Bosnian Cultural Centre BKC in Sarajevo after a first screening in the olympic stadion Zetra, attended by an audience of 4500 on 1.3.2006. In Banja Luka there has been only one screening for a selected audience, and no public screenings are foreseen. In Belgrade, the film has been launched this week. It is a very discrete and "silent" film. We are given mainly images of people's life in Sarajevo today, of the hardships of Esma, a single mother raising her 13-year old daughter Sara, of the post-war wounds of Esma, Sara, Esma's male colleague, his mother, the members of the women's association. In this discrete film, the few "outbursts" revealing horrific details of the characters' past are particularly moving.

Links: Portrait of J. Zbanic in die tageszeitung/taz (20.2.2006); interview with J. Zbanic in Der Kurier (20.2.2006); interview with J. Zbanic in Der Standard (23.2.2006); interview with J. Zbanic on ORF Radio (8.3.2006); Der Standard article on the difficult situation of artists in Bosnia-Herzegovina (20.2.2006); die tageszeitung/taz article on film in Bosnia-Herzegovina and on the reception of Grbavica in Sarajevo (21.2.2006).

Sorry, most of these links are for German-speakers! Here is an article in English published in The Independent (20.2.2006).