It strikes a balance between authenticity – the film largely presents court-established facts about the Srebrenica genocide – and the artistic need to send a strong message.
Many films have focused on the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but ‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ is the first feature film to deal with the Srebrenica genocide, and it’s symbolic that it was released in the year in which the 25th anniversary of the massacres was commemorated. The directive was realised with the Bosnian Serb Army’s Operation Krivaja ’95, which ended in the massacres of more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica. Unlike the director’s previous films, which mostly dealt with the war from a post-conflict perspective, this story unfolds in the fourth year of the hostilities, four months after Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic signed the so-called ‘Directive 7’, which ordered his troops to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity, with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica or Zepa”. These are the words that open Jasmila Zbanic’s ‘ Quo Vadis, Aida?’, a feature film about a Bosniak woman called Aida (played by Jasna Djuricic), a translator for the United Nations in Srebrenica who is trying to save her family after the fall of the town in July 1995 to forces led by Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic (played by Boris Isakovic).
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