Teacher-turned-indispensable-interpreter, Aida (Jasna Djuricic), runs around a crowded United Nations base relaying messages amid a humanitarian crisis on the brink of devolving into an unspeakable catastrophe. More importantly, she is a mother vehemently trying to wield whatever little influence she has to ensure her sons and husband survive, in Jasmila Zbanic’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?”
The historical backdrop is July 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica just after the Serb army seized it, but right before they proceeded to carry out a highly premeditated genocide against the locals under the orders of General Mladic (Boris Isakovic)—depicted here as a villain trying, but failing, to wear the cloak of diplomacy to hide the cruelest of intentions.
READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2021
Thrust into the grasp of war, the title character’s plight, both personal and communal, steers the adrenaline-laden drama “Quo Vadis, Aida?” from writer-director Zbanic. This under-the-radar must-see is currently Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Oscar-shortlisted entry for Best International Feature Film and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
Zbanic, whose career has focused on stories about the events and aftermath of the armed conflict in her home country, introduces Aida, with her weathered expression of perpetual concern, as she tries to convince her superiors, U.N. officials specifically from the Dutch envoy, to allow her loved ones into the facility for protection. Thousands of people are already inside, and thousands more wait outside, fearful of the Serbs’ next move.
We are quickly thrown into the chaos and follow an overwhelmed Aida navigating her translating duties and her familial worry. Cinematographer Christine A. Maie, a long-time collaborator of the director, frames Aida small amid the masses. She gets lost in an ocean of people suffering, which visually makes the viewer aware of the magnitude of what she is dealing with and the ineptitude of those in charge. Srebrenica represents a shameful chapter for the U.N., which allowed for the horror to unfurl without attempting to stop it.
“Where should all these people go?” Aida asks (in line with the movie’s title), and so the question of forced displacement and uprooting becomes crucial to the story, because there’s no safe haven waiting for them. However, even more piercingly painful is the fact that the perpetrators are their neighbors and former students divided along religious lines. Later, as the situation worsens, she destroys precious photos, worried that if they survive the other band might find their memories of happier days offensive.
Within the narrative frame of 24 hours or so, Zbanic conceives an unshakably intricate plot that incorporates international aid organizations’ bureaucratic inefficacy, whose job is to protect the powerless, the broken ties between the members of this community, and the heart-wrenching portrait of an unwavering heroine that avoids sentimentalism.
At every turn, Aida’s increasingly desperate attempts to find a solution to their dire prospects, or to leverage the service she’s provided for a life-saving favor, project razor-sharp, unnerving energy. As the Serbs take control of their captive’s destiny, Aida is asked to leave her family behind and fights it to no avail. Like her, the camera turns frantic as it follows the haywire action.
Zbanic’s masterful directorial prowess is on full display throughout, with such a large number of extras being shot with a handheld camera, while the screenplay functions both in service of historical accuracy and maintaining the spotlight on this heroine. For the viewer, the film has a heart rate-rising effect that’s almost unbearable in its potency.
Even if we can suspect the outcome of Aida’s pleading and ideas to hide the men in her life, in seeing her efforts, we hope that she can pull it off and ride off into the sunset somehow. The emotional blow comes in the realization that even if that were the case, there were countless other families that didn’t enjoy such luck. Zbanic’s astonishingly immersive, like a thriller you can’t turn away from but with profound implications about the best and worst of our species.
For a brief moment early on, Zbanic opens a window into life before the bullets ripped through flesh and the exodus of the panic-stricken population. In a flashback, Aida, wearing make-up and smiling, rejoices in the company of others, possibly even those who now point the guns at her. Zbanic constantly ensures we understand what was destroyed here. Images of a peaceful past, of individuals who’d live in harmony for generations before the seed of irrational hatred ravaged their lives, reinforce how unfortunate reality became.
If there’s one reproachable note here is that the other side, the Serbs and collaborators, only gets nuance or conflicting sentiments in passing. For example, when Aida chats with a former student who remains respectful but now sees her as an enemy.
Djuricic deserves accolades and praise the world over. If awards validated sheer quality, every Best Actress award would have her name this year. If you didn’t know who this Serbian actress was before this superlative outing, you’ll remember her long after. She is utterly unforgettable. Her face is burdened with a sorrowful grimace as impotence brews inside. Her responsibility is both to her immediate family and to the thousands of people whose lives are at stake. She is the only one capable of communicating for them, of voicing their concerns, and all that pressure mounts while the U.N. officials dismiss her.
Djuricic’s Aida stays pragmatic until she absolutely can’t. Desperation takes over her reaction, and our anxiety overflows with her. It’s impossible not to feel for her. She screams into the void asking for her, in English and Bosnian, and the world doesn’t hear her. In a sense, her powerlessness in the face of such atrocities is symbolic of what Bosnian people as a whole experienced, left to die in part because of foreign inaction. That Djuricic, a prodigy of measured delivery and emotional restraint, can affect one so deeply without an outburst of melodrama or over-the-top rage is nearly miraculous.
Brilliantly, Zbanic doesn’t close her historical fiction on the tragedy, but instead builds a poignant coda about the possibility of forgiveness and the process of mending, or at least patching, the wounds that can never fully heal. Superbly executed, “Quo Vadis, Aida?” is a masterful high wire act of tension and devastating humanism. [A]
“Quo Vadis, Aida?” is available now on Virtual Cinemas and will be hitting VOD on March 12.