Quo Vadis, Aida?

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2021)

Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people – rescue or death? Which move should she take?

Date of release
2021-02-26
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (503)
Runtime
1h 44m
Genres
War, Drama, History
Director
Jasmila Žbanić
Collection
Quo Vadis, Aida? Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 7 · Nominations: 13. Including: IFFR audience award; Golden Orange Award for Best Film in International Competition; European Film Award for Best Director; European Film Award for Best Film

Quo Vadis, Aida? is a 2020 internationally co-produced war drama film written, produced and directed by Jasmila Žbanić, and based on Hasan Nuhanović's book Under the UN Flag. An international co-production of twelve production companies, the film was shown in the main competition section of the 77th Venice International Film Festival.

Production

Jasmila Žbanić and her husband Damir Ibrahimović found the basis for the film in Under the UN Flag, a book by the Srebrenica survivor Hasan Nuhanović who worked as a translator at the UN base in Potočari. They obtained the rights and started working on the screenplay with Nuhanović.

Thom Karremans refused to meet Žbanić, so she consulted with David Harland, former UN chief of civil affairs for Bosnia and Herzegovina, who investigated UN reports on what happened in Srebrenica. In the meantime, Ibrahimović found that it was impossible to fund the film solely from Bosnia and Herzegovina, so companies from Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania and Turkey joined the production.

In order to create a world for the film for viewers to enter, Žbanić analyzed authentic war videos on YouTube, as well as videos she received surreptitiously. She had access to seven hours of video footage of how Dutch soldiers lived and what life was like at the base. This helped her with the set design details and the spirit of the UN base.

Serbian actress Jasna Đuričić was the first choice for the role of the protagonist. Đuričić and Žbanić had previously worked together on For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (2013). When it came to the role of Ratko Mladić, Žbanić at one point considered not showing him at all, but filming him from behind. However, the idea was abandoned because the director did not want to mystify him or "give him some kind of aura that did not belong to him".

Many of the film's extras survived horrors of war themselves. One day, filming was even interrupted after two women, who were Srebrenica survivors themselves, got upset at the sight of Isaković in the role of Mladić.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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