Review: Grbavica, Land of My Dreams

Jasmila Źbanić’s 2006 film, Grbavica, Land of My Dreams, is about to be released for the first time in the United States. I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of her film through Matt’s Movies, a film club of sorts sponsored by Los Angeles radio station, KCRW. Grbavica is the story of a woman (Esma) and her 12 year old daughter (Sara) living in the Sarajevo of today, a city haunted by the ethnic conflict and still suffering from the open wounds from the war of the previous decade. The film is a meditation on the aftermath of conflict: how does a society recover from the wounds of ethnic cleansing? And when brought down to the personal level, how does a person deal with seemingly irreconcilable emotions of the past?

The film’s title refers to a neighborhood in Sarajevo and literally means “woman with a hump.” As metaphor, the community, Grbavica, is a woman who keeps on living, despite a deformity or condition that makes life more challenging. As a metonym, Grbavica is the city of Sarajevo and the country of Bosnia that struggles to live despite the past. Of course, this also applies to Esma, the protagonist, who is but one of the many women who has survived war and continues to live with this hump on her back.

Dialogue is peppered with plenty of harsh language, itself mirroring the violence and terror of the past as it continues to erupt in daily life.  Conflict as well as the threat of violence are present in everyday Sarajevo. The music in the film was great. It included chanting (llahijas), traditional folk music as well as the turbo folk and music played in the nightclub.

Most of the film was shot in wintry Sarajevo. The major scenes of the film include the apartment of Esma and Sara, the nightclub where Esma works and meets Pelda, a kind coworker, a women’s center where she receives social assistance and bides time with other women similarly situated, Sara’s school, and a few minor scenes shot around the city, including the markets, streets, hills, and abandoned buildings. The spaces of Esma’s existence are supremely claustrophobic: all of which seem to offer no reprieve from confrontation with the past. In her apartment, we see precious few moments when home is a reprieve from the harsh daily life of a Sarajevo not fully recovered or rebuilt. The tension only increases as Esma desperately saves money to pay for Sara’s school trip and Sara becomes more insistent on getting answers about her father’s past. Similarly, the nightclub guests’ profligate expenditure on drink and dance only reminds Esma of the disposable income that constantly eludes her. Even more challenging for Esma is the sexual debauchery, which only reminds her of the terrifying union of sex and violence during the war. Serving as a complex metaphor for reconciliation, the women’s center metamorphoses along with Esma, beginning as site of burden and denial and moving toward an acknowledgement with the past shared with the women of Sarajevo.

In one set of scenes I didn’t quite know how to interpret, Pelda and his friend are propositioned by a mafia man with a score to settle with their employer. The man offers a large bounty and a nice car for killing their boss, arguing that during the war their employer spent his time profiting rather than participating in armed conflict. Ultimately, Pelda refuses the offer. Interestingly, the entire scene is shot on the hills overlooking a newly reconstructed mosque. There are no other moments in the film that so openly situate religion. Is the message that religion inserts itself into Pelda’s decision not to pursue the violent path sought by his associate, or that the nationalist motivations of the mafia boss are informed (guided?) by religion? What is the filmmaker’s view?

I really enjoyed this film. It is a difficult subject matter and has a bleakness that won’t appeal to mainstream audiences; however, it is a well-constructed story and a prescient reminder of cost of war.

Details:

Length: 90 min
Format: 35mm, color
Language: Bosnian (English subtitles)
Distributor: Strand Releasing

Cast:

Mirjana Karanović (Esma)
Luna Mijović (Sara)
Leon Lučev (Pelda)