Rent Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020)

The Srebrenica massacre dramatized in a hard-hitting film that feels like a documentary - Quo Vadis, Aida? review by Philip in Paradiso

The film is a dramatization of the tragic events known as the Srebrenica massacre, during the 1990s war in the Balkans, perpetrated by Serbian troops led by Serbian leader Ratko Mladic (since caught and convicted as a war criminal) at the expense of Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys, in July 1995. The massacre was part of a broader and systematic genocidal policy of so-called 'ethnic cleansing' targeting the Muslim population.

The film is a piece of fiction but it follows the events in such a hyper-realistic way that it feels like a documentary, which only increases its impact, somehow. We follow the events through the eyes of Aida Selmanagic, a teacher acting as an interpreter working for the Dutch battalion of the UN, based at Srebrenica. As the chaos unfolds when Serbian troops enter the town, Aida tries to do her best and to save her own family, consisting of her husband and her 2 sons.

The film is very good but it does not offer any real insight into the causes of what happened at the time. It does not give any detailed explanation as to why the UN, and the Dutch troops more particularly, acted in the way that they did, although we get some elements of appreciation. The movie is purely factual, in a low-key and dignified way: it shows us what happened, and how the tragedy unfolded, step by step, inexorably. It does not try to be spectacular: the facts speak for themselves or, rather, scream for themselves. It is a deeply moving film. If we thought such tragedies could not happen in Europe again, Russia's invasion of the Ukraine in Feb 2022 has, alas, proved otherwise.