The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (2024)
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent Review
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent is a 2024 Croatian short film directed by Nebojsa Slijepcevic and starring Goran Bogdan and Dragan Micanovic. It’s a very effective short.
The movie is set in 1993 Bosnia and it follows a massacre that happened when a Serbian paramilitary organization pulled out dozens of Muslims from a passenger train and killed them. The film depicts an act of heroism that ended up saving one innocent life. Tomo Buzov’s story is truly heroic as he is the only one who stood up to these terrorists, eventually losing his life to save another. But the main strength of the movie is that it is not told from his point of view, but from the point of view of another man who, ironically enough, remained silent as all of these atrocities unraveled.
Goran Bogdan is very good in the main role and he sold the panic of the passengers on that train that day. There is a terrifying atmosphere to this film that is apparent throughout its slim runtime, but the best choice was to not show those horrific killings, but to depict everything going on from one man’s point of view. It’s a very sophisticated film that would have been even stronger had it been twice as long as the ending felt a bit abrupt and not as effective as the rest of the short. But the directing and acting are superb.
