Great Film overall

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely Fantastic

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

In Grbavica, Sarajevo, Esma Halilovic (Mirjana Karanovic) raises her teenage daughter Sara (Luna Mijovic) alone with many difficulties and working in double-shift. Every now and then Esma participates in a group therapy with other traumatized Bosnian women that have survived to the Balkan War. Esma needs two hundred Euros for the school trip of Sara and is working hard to raise the amount. When Sara is informed by her teacher that the martyr certificate of her father would grant her to travel for free, she presses her mother to give the document. But Esma borrows the money and pays the full price and Sara forces her mother to disclose the truth about her father."Grbavica" is a heartbreaking movie about the violence against women in the Balkan War. The touching and credible story is very simple but discloses in a very delicate way through the relationship of a mother abused in a women's camp and her spoiled and rebel teenage daughter. The performance of Mirjana Karanovic and the direction of Jasmila Zbanic are awesome and the result of their work will certainly bring tears to sensitive viewers. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Em Segredo" ("In Secret")

This is a truly sad but beautiful masterpiece. We have heard so much about wars and atrocities that go with it. What about people who still have to live with all the nightmares and aftermaths of the atrocities on their own land, which they had once loved in an unrestrained and uninhibited manner but is now tainted with horror and sins? What have they done to deserve a life like this and what actually keeps them going but not giving up? Zbanic gives us the answer - it is love, the love of your family, the love of your home, despite it being a kind of contaminated, qualified and conflicting love which is eternally tainted with gruesome memories and haunting flashbacks. The nationalistic song sung by the students and in the end, an unsettled Sara, on the bus sums up this theme neatly and concisely.A very genuine and down-to-earth movie which speaks so much for itself and for the victims of war crimes who are and will still be living in a war of their own emotions for the rest of their lives. Besides, the direction is simplistic with a classy emotional twist powerfully built up to the climax of the scene of Esma's confession. The ending scene is a lifetime unforgettable. No words, just a song but it sums up what Sara has to feel and say perfectly. The acting is superb, expectedly from the veteran Karanovic and pleasantly surprisingly from the teenage Luna Mijovic.It is worth in the least Oscar nominations for the best director and the best foreign film . Go and watch it!

This film is about a woman who has to raise money for her daughter's school trip. Or she could produce a certificate to say that her daughter's father is a war hero, so that her daughter could go to the trip for free.The film is down to earth and realistic. There are no grand sets, no expensive costumes and no fancy cars. Instead, we get to see a real side of life in Sarajevo. A bus ride, working in factories, picnic on the hilltop or women trying dresses on: all of these seemingly trivial matters reflect how people live. It brings out the soul of the characters, and we get to care for them.The daughter, Sara's youthful rebellion is direct and raw. Her spectrum of emotions, from sadness to joy, on the final bus ride is remarkable. Esma's work in the night club is also memorable. Her shock and disgust with things that go on around her, and her self pity that she has to earn money like that is striking.Esma's final confession in the group is touching and emotional. It crystallises anger, hate, despair, ambivalence and love into one. From the interaction between Esma and Sara throughout the film, who would have thought that Sara was in fact born in such circumstances?This film is touching, not only because it exposes the scars of post war Bosnia, but also the everyday tragedies of the lower class.

A very touching story full of really exact details of daily routine in Sarajevo nowadays and a very typical atmosphere of a family without men just can't leave you indifferent whether you believe or not that Bosnian war was an inner affair of the former Yugoslavia without any Western participation, etc. The countries after wars or revolutions are full of women who can't re-start their private lives broken by some shock. The last scene in which the protagonist's daughter Sara (definitely named after Sarajevo!) together with her classmates sings a patriotic song dedicated to the capital of Bosnia makes recall Leo Tolstoy's "Patriotism is the last shelter of bastards" - well, I don't think so, yet patriotism may be really the last shelter of unhappy people. With all this very few people in the audience can notice that the protagonist Esma played by Kusturica's actress Mirijana Karanovic is a little bit too old for this role. Esma (as she recalls her student's years before the Bosnian war) should be not about 50 but about 34-35, if not of the same age as the film director Jasmila Zbanic, and she can't say jokingly "I swear by Tito!" since that generation didn't feel the "Titoism" that much (Esma should be about 6-7 years old when Tito died). Jasmila Zbanic and her European producers could hardly notice it but ... can they count??? Helas, being exact is like being responsible which is getting rare in our civilization. All the rest social and historic details known only to Yugoslavians are beyond my own knowledge. Well, can the spectators count, especially if they are members of jury in Berlinale?!