Quo Vadis, Aida?

“Don't shoot the piano player” were the famous words uttered by Dutchbat commander Thom Karremans before he toasted with Serbian general Ratko Mladić in 1995. Shortly afterwards, Mladić’s army committed genocide on the Muslim population of Srebrenica, killing over eight thousand people. This moving drama by Jasmila Žbanić meticulously dissects how this conflict went from bad to worse. Žbanić’s previous films studied the lasting effects of the genocide on contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now, for the first time, the director focuses on the events themselves. The fictional Aida, an interpreter at the Dutch UN base in Srebrenica, feels torn. She has to translate Dutch orders for the locals, but in the meantime she also has to try and save her husband and two sons from a mass grave, while Ratko Mladić’s men move the Muslim population.

This gripping and shocking film presents itself clearly as a reconstruction and witness testimony, with a fearful question mark at the end. Were there lessons learned, or is the next violent display brewing underneath the current-day forgetfulness? And did the UN peacekeepers, who did not do enough to prevent the massacre of over eight thousand Muslim people, learn from it?