| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A+ |
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| Acting: |
A- |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A- |
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Deeply Felt and Painfully Truthful
by Norbert (movies profile)
May 7, 2007
2
of
2 people found this review helpful
This is the first and only movie I’ve ever seen directed by a Bosniak director. The movie not only explores the complex dynamic between a single mother named Esma and her innocent daughter Sara but the traumatic psychological aftermath of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s. At first, there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary with the mother-daughter pair, at least not anything dramatically abnormal, since so many men died during Bosnia’s separatist war with Serbia in the 1990’s. The official family story goes that Sara’s father was killed during the war as a “shaheed,” an honorable Moslem martyr. However, this purportedly noble family history gradually and mercilessly unravels as the film unfolds, when Sara’s schoolteacher offers the students a discount to the school trip if the students could produce a certificate proving that their fathers died a martyr. Sara asks her mother to do just that, but Esma produces only excuses, and in the end pays the full price of 200 Euros. Frustrated by the lack of answers, Sara obtains a gun from her classmate and threatens her mother with it, demanding the real truth. At last, Esma divulges the truth, and the painful shame that comes with it transforms the mother-daughter relationship. This is a very realistic and vivid portrayal of the harsh realities endured by the strong women of Bosnia in the last 20 years. It is definitely worth a watch. |
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