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Grbavica Movie Review

Grbavica is a 2006 Bosnian drama film directed by Jasmila Zbanic and starring Mirjana Karanovic. It’s a very questionable movie both in motifs and quality.

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“You are the bastard of a Chetnik!“

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A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Bosnian War. The movie follows both of their stories, but mostly focuses on the daughter’s wish to find out who her father was. Their confrontation makes it painfully clear that she is an offspring of a Serbian soldier who raped her during the war.

This movie’s intentions were questionable to say the least. I blame not the movie itself, which is mostly fine, but the director, Jasmila Zbanic. Her statements during the film’s release were grossly miscalculated and blown out of proportions, especially in the victims’ numbers. The fact that this weakly directed movie ended up winning the Golden Bear at the 56^th Berlin International Film Festival just goes to show how political these festivals can be.

That confrontational scene was overwrought and unsubtle in the worst way possible. Besides its problematic anti-Serbian sentiments and the movie’s biased approach at telling an “anti-war” story, the movie isn’t great objectively speaking, which is the only approach that must be taken when discussing such a turbulent subject matter.

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With that being said, that entire scene was ridiculously emotional and the whole movie features scenes between mother and daughter that simply felt unrealistic and overly dramatic. The best example of such poor dialogue comes when the daughter basically asks her mother who “fucked her”.

Yes, Sara is insufferable. Her arc of wanting to find out who her father was is definitely powerful, but she as a character is simply terrible, not realistic at all and certainly difficult to care for, though the actress is fine and her look is interesting.

Mirjana Karanovic is a fantastic actress. Her controversial politics aside, she is undoubtedly an amazing talent and here her performance is the film’s most accomplished achievement. Her character is well realized and very easy to root for and she is believable in her every scene. She managed to at least somewhat elevate the film’s quite unfortunate dialogue. I wanted a bigger role for the man that he meets, but the scenes with the two are definitely quite sweet.

Grbavica also tries to be a coming-of-age movie of sorts, but fails miserably at that because its short runtime did not leave enough room for the teenage elements to take off successfully. The movie’s at its best in its treatment of rape and how long lasting the PTSD can be from that trauma. The moment in the bus where she gets scared by the man’s chest hair is the best example of that. There are certain more subtle scenes in the first half that really work, but the second half ruined all of that with such an on-the-nose handling of its dialogue.

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Grbavica is very weakly directed. I would even say that Jasmila Zbanic’s direction is poor. That is why this win at the German festival is highly undeserved. The movie is also shot in such a mediocre manner so as to resemble more a television series than a true movie. Only the acting is excellent and the characterization is fine, but everything else is far from great.