Movie: Grbavica – Land of My Dreams (2006)

While many war movies depict the soldiers who fought, people who died, and hard-fought victories, this movie depicts those who survived the Bosnian War and the children who were born during it.

During the Bosnian War—through events such as the Srebrenica massacre that occurred in 1995—the Serb army carried out a strategic “ethnic cleansing” where Bosnian Muslim men were killed and women were raped and forced to bear children. The original title “Grbavica” refers to the district in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which the ethnic cleansing occurred.

Esma, a single mother, lives in this district with her only daughter Sara, who is 12 years old. Sara’s grade is going on a field trip, and when the teacher tells the kids that those who lost their fathers in the war get to go free of charge and those whose fathers were injured have their fee reduced, the eyes light up in the kids who have such fathers. Because Sara was told by her mother that her father died honorably in battle, she requests her father’s death certificate in order to go on the trip for free, but Esma makes up a variety of excuses and doesn’t show her the death certificate. Esma barely makes ends meet with compensation money and sewing, but also adds on a night shift as a waitress at a nightclub to earn money for Sara’s trip fees.

A man working as a bouncer and driver at this nightclub remembers Esma from when they had met while he was searching for the corpse of his father at a war morgue. Esma had also been looking for the corpse of her father there in the morgue. The man grows to like Esma. When Esma reluctantly accepts an invitation to go on a date, she finds out that this man is educated, studied economics in college, and still has a desire to study. However, he mutters that he would not be able to handle the rigorous college life anymore because he currently is living without passion and discipline; and besides there aren’t good jobs in the current situation of society, even if one graduates from college. As for Esma, before the war started, she was a medical student and was working hard to become a doctor. If not for the war, these two would’ve met as elite, possibly as a doctor and a government official, and the two of them could have built a happy home.

Sara, at the height of a rebellious age, cruelly fights against her mother who does not talk about the father. She says to her mom, “You’ll leave me,” and also, “Mom, promise me you won’t get married.” After all, though, she is an ordinary girl, delights in playing with friends, and becomes close with and tenderly cares for another boy who has no father and is living more nihilistically than herself. After Esma manages to pay the cost of the school trip with a loan, Sara questions her intensely about where her father’s death certificate is.

One day, the bouncer comes to visit Esma. Since he gained permission, he plans to immigrate to Austria. At that time, Esma’s response was not, “Are you leaving me?” or not, “I wish you happiness,” but rather, “And who will identify your father’s body if you leave?” Sara, frustrated that her mother just sadly lets this man leave, points the handgun she borrowed from her friend and threatens Esma, “Tell me about my father!” Parting with this man, her difficult relationship with Sara, economic struggles, and an unforgettable past all combine at this moment for Esma and explode; Esma then tells Sara that she is a child born from the rape by an enemy soldier.

Innumerable cruel things occurred during the Bosnian War. How does one convey these to the world and to the next generation? If someone just presents cruel events one after another, it would be a documentary. If someone presents who the bad guy is, who the victim is, and what to do to bring them to justice, it would be propaganda. However, in order to make a good movie as a form of art, it must have hope in it. The past is unalterable and the future could take any direction, so what art can do in this situation is present hope.

This movie is sad, but there is hope. This hope could be short-lived and it may vanish at the end of a tiring day, but at least there is hope. When Sara asks her mother what part of her looks like her father, Esma finally answers that Sara’s hair color was the only thing she had in common with the father who had raped Esma. After Sara learns the truth about her father, she sobs profusely and shaves her own head. On the morning of the trip, Sara hesitantly waves to her mother from the bus, while Esma smilingly waves back. Esma at first hated her baby and continued to while it was in her belly, but while breast-feeding after the birth, she accepted the baby and was determined to raise Sara. And the greatest salvation is that this movie doesn’t call the enemy “Serbs.” The movie says that the people who slaughtered and raped the Muslims of Bosnia were Chetniks (the derogatory term for Serbs who believed in the Greater Serbia ideology, fought alongside the Nazis against Tito in the past, and gathered up an anti-Muslim force in Bosnia for the Bosnian War), and never says that all Serbs are the enemy of Bosnians. The past is unalterable. However, the people involved in the making of this movie may have wanted to say that hope doesn’t come from thoughts like, “Serbs did this and that, and so they are evil.”

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