Two films about NATO bombing of Europe were released in Serbia this fall

Over the past month, Belgrade has hosted the premieres of two films dedicated to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Photo: Ksenia Kirillova

One of them, "78 Days," was presented in the form of a video diary of three sisters living in a small Serbian town. How explains film director Emilia Gasic, she herself was less than 1999 years old in the spring of 8. Like the heroines of the film, she kept a Hi-8 camera at home. Watching the tapes she had made as a child as an adult, Emilia found recordings made during the bombings and discovered old photographs that captured her and her sister hiding under a table from the sounds of an airplane.

"78 Days" was the debut film of Emilija Gasic and has already won the award "The Golden Tower" of the 1st European Film Festival in Palic. As the director herself explains, this film is intended to combine the themes of growing up and bombing. According to the plot, girls compete with each other to film each other, make fun of each other, sometimes quarrel, and against this background, as if by accident, the echo of explosions gets into the frame.

Fleeing from the bombings, a family from Belgrade settles next door to the sisters: a teenage boy and his younger sister with her parents. The new neighbor immediately becomes not only a friend, but also an object of rivalry between the two sisters. Nevertheless, the director does not let us forget that the first passion and first suffering of the teenagers take place against the backdrop of war. At one point, a random bomb hits the neighboring house and kills the boy's younger sister.

Photo: Ksenia Kirillova

Eight-year-old Sava, the hero of the film "Bauk", which premiered in the capital of Serbia on October 1, also miraculously escapes death. Unlike the heroes of the previous film, Sava lives with his mother in Belgrade, and the war completely changes his life. Here it is shown not through the prism of an amateur camera, but in its entirety: with the horror of explosions, constant air raid alarms and frightened people forced to sit in basements. The school where Sava studied is closed, the daughter of the local priest Milica, with whom the boy is in love, leaves the country with her mother and sisters, and children's plays and innocent games are replaced by constant fear.

At some point, a homeless yard dog chases the boy into a trolleybus, and he finds himself alone in the city center. In the evening, trying to get home, Sava runs after a departing trolleybus, which is hit by a bomb before his eyes. After that, the boy loses his speech and hearing…

The film "78 Days" seems extremely intimate and homely, while "Bauk" is a larger-scale film full of symbolism. But both of them convey the atmosphere of children's fear of war. The director and scriptwriter of "Bauk" defines his film as "a film about children's fear". Goran Radovanovic. By the way, the other day the film conquered Grand Prix at the 27th Religion Film Today Festival in Italy.

The creator of "Bauka" emphasizes, that his film is first and foremost anti-war. In his comment to ForumDaily, he noted that he had been hatching the idea of ​​creating such a film for 7 years. Incidentally, this is not the first time that Goran Radovanovic has addressed the topic of war. In 2015, his film “Enclave", which takes place in Kosovo, a small Serbian enclave.

Photo: Ksenia Kirillova

The main character of "Enclave", a boy named Nenad, lives there with his father and dying grandfather. Nenad is the last student at a Serbian school, who is personally transported to classes by an armored personnel carrier of the peacekeeping forces, and this becomes the subject of complex relations with the Albanian children in the neighborhood. The film won prizes at several festivals and was even nominated by Serbia for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

This year marks 25 years since NATO bombed Yugoslavia, but films about the horrors of war are more relevant than ever. Emilia Gasic sure, that it is important for every country to remember its past in order to have a future. We would like to add that, unfortunately, today we are increasingly seeing unlearned lessons of history.

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