X
- 2021
- Approved
- Neon
- 1 h 41 m
- 2021
- Approved
- Neon
- 1 h 41 m
Summary Bosnia, July 11th 1995. Aida is a translator for the United Nations 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...
Directed By: Jasmila Zbanic
Written By: Hasan Nuhanovic, Jasmila Zbanic
- 2021
- Approved
- Neon
- 1 h 41 m
- 2021
- Approved
- Neon
- 1 h 41 m
Quo Vadis, Aida?
8.1
Where to Watch
Summary Bosnia, July 11th 1995. Aida is a translator for the United Nations 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...
Directed By: Jasmila Zbanic
Written By: Hasan Nuhanovic, Jasmila Zbanic
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
97
100% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
97
100% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić succeeds where many filmmakers fail in conveying the dimensions of a mass atrocity in a film that matches clear-eyed personal experience to history in a lightly fictionalized story.
The rigorous honesty of Quo Vadis, Aida? is harrowing, partly because it subverts many of the expectations that quietly attach themselves to movies about historical trauma. We often watch them not to be confronted with the cruelty of history, but to be comforted with redemptive tales of resistance, resilience and heroism.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 145 User Ratings
8.1
83% Positive
120 Ratings
120 Ratings
7% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
10% Negative
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 145 User Ratings
8.1
83% Positive
120 Ratings
120 Ratings
7% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
10% Negative
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
This film should be watched by all Serbs to see and understand the truth of what exactly Bosnian Serb political and military leaders have done to Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. Bosnian Serbs forces killed more than 8,000 men and boys in cold blood just because they were Muslims. Genocide in its most horrific form.
Report
"Now you will see the real film," says a Serbian soldier just before one of the most wrenching scenes I've seen in a long time. It's as if director Jasmila Zbanic is warning us about the madness that is the "fiction" that comes after: the crude reality of a country going on despite all the suffering as if nothing had happened.
'Quo Vadis, Aida?' really hit me. I lay there motionless witnessing the horrors of war. Why did the atrocity represented here happen? The film clearly points to the inefficiency of the UN; it's just frustrating seeing them as mere spectators of the whole crisis.
Jasna Djuricic's role as Aida is so powerful, and it really deserved more recognition. The way she translates the concern of a mother in the most difficult of situations is very convincing. It took me a while to finally see this film, and I just have to thank Zbanic for exploring a very painful chapter of the history of her country and the whole world.
Report
This is not historical revisionism, if anything, Quo Vadis, Aida? works to un-revise history, re-centering the victims’ plight as the eye of a storm of evils — not only the massacre itself, but the broader evils of institutional failure and international indifference.
Zbanic expertly wades through the scenario so that we aren’t taken for granted. Rather than show us what we know is happening, she includes foreshadowing, rumors, and expressions to put a chill in our spine instead. What’s more is her ability to weave in the reality that this fight concerns divisions on the lines of religion and race rather than pure geography.
The energy and passion of Zbanic’s fresh, new, direct gaze at the conflict comes through in every frame.
Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? is a razor-sharp incrimination of failed foreign policies from around the world embedded in a deeply humanist and moving character study of the kind of person that these policies leave behind.
Like the unblinking closeup that concludes the deeply moving (and ultimately redemptive?) epilogue to Quo Vadis, Aida?, Žbanić’s powerful and personal film keeps its eyes wide open.
I am the only one who is a bit disappointed?
Half of the time Aida tries to take advantage of her position helping her OWN family. What happens with the others seems to be irrelevant.
The other half of the time you don't understand, because the language is not translated, so you can just guess what is happening.
Report
(Mauro Lanari)
"A Sarajevo sniper lets himself be interviewed in an almost dark room. It seems incredible to me: she is a woman. A woman who shoots a six-year-old boy? Why?
'In twenty years he would have had twenty-six', is the answer that the interpreter translates.
The cold becomes more intense, it is cold inside. The interview ends there, there is no other possible question."
These are the concluding words of the book written by Gino Strada "Green Parrots", after which the silence, the emptiness, the blank page, the unspeakable. There are two categories of anti-war films: those that condemn all wars and those that limit themselves to denouncing a single particular tragic episode. Unfortunately, Žbanić's movie is of the second kind.
Report
Production Company
Deblokada Produkcija,
Coop99 Filmproduktion,
Digital Cube,
N279 Entertainment,
Razor Film Produktion GmbH,
Extreme Emotions,
Indie Prod,
Tordenfilm,
Turkish Radio & Television (TRT),
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF),
ARTE,
Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF),
Radiotelevizija Bosne i Hercegovine (BHRT),
Eurimages,
Federal Ministry of Education and Science,
Centrul National al Cinematografiei (CNC),
Fondacija za Kinematografiju Sarajevo,
Österreichisches Filminstitut,
Nederlands Filmfonds,
Netherlands Film Production Incentive,
Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej,
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg,
Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC),
L'Aide aux Cinémas du Monde,
Institut Français,
Filmfonds Wien,
Sørfond,
MEDIA Programme of the European Union,
Ministry of Culture of Canton Sarajevo,
Open Society Foundations
Release Date Mar 5, 2021
Duration 1 h 41 m
Rating Approved
Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 1 Nomination
CinEuphoria Awards
• 2 Wins & 8 Nominations
Polish Film Awards
• 4 Wins & 5 Nominations
