Bosnia & Herzegovina

Cinema of Bosnia & Herzegovina

The cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the cinema of Yugoslavia are inevitably intertwined.

Bosnia, as one of the six republics of the former Yugoslavia was a favorite destination for Yugoslavia’s prominent film industry. Yugoslav president Joseph Broz Tito was a huge cinephile, and it is said that he adored John Wayne and Hollywood westerns.

Tito had a heavy hand in the industry: he carefully reviewed screenplays, even giving feedback on the scripts, before green lighting the projects. The films of Yugoslavia were essential in helping to craft the narrative, and dare I say, “mythology” of the new Yugoslav identity — helping to create a Yugoslav historical narrative through entertaining storytelling.

The first feature to come out of Bosnia was the 1950 WWII partisan flick, “Major Bauk,” directed by Nikola Popović, a prominent Yugoslav actor and director born in 1907 in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia. “Major Bauk” is set in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s south-east region during World War II, when the Yugoslav Partisans were fighting against the Italian Fascists and Serbian Chetniks.

Several of Yugoslavia’s most famous Partisan war films were shot in Bosnia, utilizing their mountain scenery and their high-end production studio, BosnaFilm.

The must watch partisan films from Sarajevo-based-BosnaFilm include, “Battle of Susjeska” (1973) directed by Croatian filmmaker Stipe Delić, another WWII Partisan-victory film which stars Richard Burton as a young Joseph Broz Tito; “Walter Defends Sarajevo” (1972) directed by Hajrudin Krvavac, a filmmaker from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the larger-than-life “Battle of Neretva” (1969) directed by Montenegrin filmmaker Veljko Bulajić.

My favorite movie of the era is the 1972 flick, “Walter Defends Sarajevo,” which stars famed Yugoslav actor Bata Živojinović, from Serbia. This movie seems to capture the heart and soul of Sarajevo.

“Walter” is the code-name for a real-life, much celebrated, WWII partisan resistance fighter, Vladimir Perić. Over time, “Walter” has become a symbol of Sarajevo, perhaps as a result of this film.

In “Walter Defends Sarajevo,” a Nazi captain is searching for “Walter” — the leader of the resistance. The German officer has been searching for over a year, yet has never found him despite deploying a “fake Walter” spy into the Partisan ranks. At the end of the film, the Nazi captain tells his superior, as he looks over a viewpoint of Sarajevo, “I finally know who Walter is.” He points to the city below. “This is Walter.”

“Battle of Neretva” was a Hollywood co-production which brought in Yul Brynner and Orson Welles and earned a 1970 Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to “Z” from Algeria.

The story behind the filming of “Battle of Neretva” is almost stranger than fiction. Like “Susjeska,” the story of the film is Tito’s own as a World War Two partisan war hero, further helping to frame the origin story of Yugoslavia. In “Nerevta,” it is the story of the wounded. Tito himself was wounded in this battle and by making this film, Tito is reminding audiences he recovered to eventually save the day and free the people, creating a communist utopia.

In the Herzegovinian town of Jablanica is the actual Bridge on the Neretva, which was blown up not once, not twice, but three times! Once, intentionally, by the WWII Partisans, to serve as a decoy for the invading German army. After the Germans retreated, thinking the Partisans would no longer advance, the Yugoslavs rebuilt the same bridge and carried their wounded soldiers across to safety. This is the general plot of the movie version.

The second time the bridge was blown up happened during WWII in retaliation from the German army.

And the third explosion, infamously in Bosnia’s cinema history, was blowing up the bridge for the recreation in the film, to make this on-screen battle feel as authentic as possible.

Tito approved the explosion of the bridge, and even provided army tanks and explosives to aid the movie-production. It is said that actual Yugoslav army soldiers were acting as extras in the movie, playing the WWII soldiers on film.

Remarkably, Pablo Picasso created the film’s poster, only the second time he painted for film art, the first being for “Andalusian Dog,” and rumor has it, he did so only in exchange for a case of Yugoslavia’s best wine.

In the early 1980s emerged the filmmaking talents of Emir Kusturica, a controversial figure today. He was born in 1954 in Sarajevo to a “secular Muslim” family. He graduated from a prestigious film school in Prague, the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), and his early films shot in Bosnia and Herzegovina are to some, considered his best works: “Do You Remember Dolly Bell?” (1981), a coming-of-age tale and “When Father Was Away On Business” (1985), and “Time of the Gypsies” (1989).

He is perhaps most famous for “Underground” (1995), a Felini-esque wartime dramedy set in Belgrade, which won him the Palm d’Or in 1995.

Today he considers himself Serbian, and has made his home in Küstendorf, also known as both Drvengrad and Mećavnik; a village in Western Serbia (near Mokra Gora) Kusturica constructed himself, originally as a film set to mimic a traditional village, which he used in his 2004 film “Life Is A Miracle.” The streets are named after famous film directors from around the world, there is a private cinema, a small chapel, and guests can come and stay overnight. There is an annual Film and Music Festival held here.

Kusturica has said in regards to this village:

“I lost my city [Sarajevo] during the war. That is why I wished to build my own village. It bears a German name: Küstendorf. I will organize seminars there, for people who want to learn how to make cinema, concerts, ceramics, painting. It is the place where I will live and where some people will be able to come from time to time. There will be of course some other inhabitants who will work. I dream of an open place with cultural diversity which sets up against globalization.”

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kusturica has another Disney-land-esq tourist village, Andrićgrad, which celebrates the Nobel Prize winning Yugoslav novelist, Ivo Andrić, most famous for his novel, The Bridge On The Drina.

This town is located in Višegrad, Republika Srpska region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where some of the worst atrocities of the Bosnian war took place.

During the wars of the 1990s, film production sunk to be nearly non-existent, however, the prestigious Sarajevo Film Festival sprung out of the war.

In the early-to-mid 1990s during the four-year-siege on Sarajevo, The Sarajevo Film Festival was formed “with the aim of helping to reconstruct civil society and retain the cosmopolitan spirit of the city.” (Festival’s website) and in the past 3 decades, it has grown to become the largest film festival in the region.

After the war, resurgence of filmmaking occurred in the early 2000s, thanks to a generation of filmmakers making war films, most notably, “No Man’s Land” (2001) written and directed by Danis Tanović and picking up an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. “No Man’s Land” was the first film from the former Yugoslavia countries to win an Oscar.

“No Man’s Land” takes place in 1993 during the Bosnia-Serbia war. A Bosnian and a Bosnian-Serb fighter find themselves trapped in the same trench with a third Bosnian soldier who is stuck dying on the top of a land mine set to explode.