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Quo Vadis, Aida? Movie Review

Quo Vadis, Aida? is a 2020 Bosnian war drama film directed by Jasmila Zbanic and starring Jasna Djuricic. It’s a solid and technically accomplished, but far from revelatory watch.

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“Please, put my family on the list“

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This director has previously made the much maligned ‘Grbavica’, which unfairly got to win a prize at the Berlin Film Festival, which was an obvious political move. She once again returns to the same subject matter of the Bosnian War, which goes to show that her capabilities as an artist and storyteller are very limited.

Still, this one is a strong improvement. Either she herself grew as a director or the simple vastness of the production that consisted of no less than nine countries helped her out, it remains a very solid technical achievement nonetheless as it’s a professional movie in cinematography, direction, acting and also editing.

Although that one flashback that we got was totally unnecessary for the character of Aida and the movie stayed in that weird lane of both personal and ambitious storytelling, it still chose to be more intimate in the ending alone that was very powerful and tragic.

Jasna Djuricic did a very good job in the role of Aida, a translator who tries to save her own family during the siege of the city of Srebrenica. This character felt believable as she struggled to do her job and save her own family and that struggle was very well depicted and it was quite emotional. The movie mostly focuses on her character with others all being not all that important, though another standout is Boris Isakovic, who is very memorable and imposing in the role of General Ratko Mladic.

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Being a Serb myself, I did not watch this movie with bias, but I tried to watch it through the objective lens, and judging it objectively, it is never hateful toward all Serbs nor does it have any problematic anti-Serbian messaging. Yes, it focuses solely on the end of the war and the so-called Bosnian Genocide, but thankfully the movie touches upon the crimes committed previously by the other side, thus it helps to explain what drove this army to commit these atrocities without justifying them of course. In my opinion, the film is clearly limited in scope, but this is the trend in period piece filmmaking these days – make a film about one event only, and in that sense it undoubtedly succeeds.

Quo Vadis, Aida? doesn’t really have a lot to say about this war, certainly nothing that we haven’t heard before. If anybody would want to do another film about this war, I would urge them to make a film with a strong message proposing unity as this war-torn, deeply divided country clearly needs that. This movie failed to do any of that and it just focused on this event without offering any messages while again emphasizing the feminism of the director, which is again something that she has done before. Still, portraying the war from the female perspective is something that she does well, so I was fine with her retreading the same ground in that respect.

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The movie is very engaging, it also avoids portraying the crimes, but it just portrays the men getting dragged to be killed off screen, which to me was a stronger choice that worked as it was somehow even more disturbing. The horror elements in that base also worked as the movie was quite intense in its first act. Everything here worked in terms of intensity while the very obvious ‘Schindler’s List’ storytelling in the second half made the movie a strong Oscar-bait film. It’s manipulative, but undoubtedly very effective in those parallels.