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Exile in Sarajevo
Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
Exile in Sarajevo
is an attempt to compensate for the Western media, crippled by its own clichés and prejudice towards any culture not in the West's club. Directors Tahir Cambis, a Melbourne actor/playwright, and Sarajevan Alma Sahbaz base their film on the premise that the West, in appeasing Serbia's right wing regime and their Bosnian Serb collaborators, are repeating the deals made with Nazi Germany during the 1930s, thereby giving heart to racist groups in our own societies where talk of cultural homogenisation is already prevalent.The results of Western policy in human terms are explored through the journey of Tahir and Alma, who eschew any pretence of detachment and set out to chart the soul of a city in exile. This is a Sarajevo we never saw before; sophisticated, spiritual, culturally dynamic - the Sarajevo ignored by CNN crews looking for blood on the streets.
Nominated for best documentary 1997 AFI awards, voted best documentary 1997 Melbourne fest audience poll.
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
Evil.I am a confirmed cynic, but it never ceases to amaze me how people can do things to other people (complete strangers, mind you) just because they have decided that other people deserve it. The sheer horror of the Bosnian war, and the efforts of the United Nations to sustain it, are astounding. Tahir and Alma give us a horse's mouth view of the destruction, death, and durability of human beings. If you had been there, this is what you would have seen.
The documentation of atrocities committed by those involved in the conflict is a necessary thing, because the sanitised some viewers may be disturbed by the following report approach just doesn't show you what happened. It is a pre-selected, spin doctored sensationalist fabrication posing as reality. Exile in Sarajevo doesn't pretend in this way, it is a Bosnia's most horrific home videos compilation of joy, tragedy, inhumanity and love.
At 91 minutes it is a tad too long, but I was already converted. I'm also used to Hollywood technical perfection + adequacy on the big screen that the hand-held, available-light style was difficult to watch, but don't let that stop you, because the message and the reality are a powerful trip. And if you think it couldn't happen here, ask yourself what Pauline Hanson stands for and how may people support her.
Security censorship classification
M (Violence, crimes against humanity)
Not for public release in Australia before date
2 October 1997
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