Quo Vadis, Aida?

Set as the Bosnian Serb army laid siege to the town of Srebrenica, this dramatises the story of an UN interpreter “Aida” (Jasna Djuricic) and her desperate fight to rescue her husband and two sons from the encroaching forces under the command of the ruthless Ratko Mladic (Boris Isakovic). Their “safe zone” is little safer than elsewhere in the war-torn community and with the largely Dutch troops entirely out-gunned and lacking external support either politically or militarily, she knows that if she can’t get her family away as they evacuate then they will not leave alive. What we see here shows the shocking ineffectiveness of the international community’s response to this horror and, despite pleas from their blue-hatted soldiers on the ground, how little was actually done to assist those facing racial genocide at the hands of a charismatic thug. Djuricic does really well here as she strives to convey a palpable sense of not just her own family panic, but of a grand scale fear that innocent civilians faced indiscriminate violence, relocation and quite possibly death imminently. It’s also quite a potent reminder of the obligations due to people who put themselves in harm’s way to help peacekeeping operations as and when these situations change. Even if, technically, these people are not a direct responsibility we still have a duty of care that this drama clearly shows us abrogated. It’s almost entirely filmed using an intimate hand-held style of photography that adds quite a degree of intimacy to the proceedings, and the last few scenes are as traumatic as cinema gets. Though it’s a tough watch it’s a worthwhile one.