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More than 1,000 people watched "Quo Vadis,
Aida?", named Best Film in the 2021 European Film Awards, in two
screenings in the town of Novi Pazar on Tuesday - the first time
it had been shown in any part of Serbia.
"The tickets sold out in an hour and a half," said Husein Memic,
whose centre showed the movie. "We are appealing for the film to
be screened across Serbia; it's absolutely senseless for it to
play only in Novi Pazar."
Jasmila Zbanic's movie has also not had a public showing in
Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic, which has thrown Bosnia into
turmoil by opposing a law making it an offence to deny that the
Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide.
Both Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb forces in 1995,
and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic were found
guilty of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia for their roles in the Srebrenica
massacre.
Zbanic said many cinemas and distributors in other parts of
Serbia and in Bosnia's Serb Republic had wanted to show the
film, but feared recriminations or reprisals.
"My intention was never to divide," she said.
"My intention was to tell the truth, and for people who don't
know about Srebrenica or who even deny Srebrenica to sit and
watch it as a movie about a mother who wants to protect her two
kids. Because that's what happened there."
Serbian state television, RTS, has always shown previous
prizewinning films. But following appeals to air "Quo Vadis,
Aida?", it said it would not make programming decisions under
media pressure.
Boris Isakovic, who plays Mladic in the movie, said he was
disappointed that it was being viewed through a political lens,
not as an artistic creation.
"It is clear that (the showing of) this film has been censored,"
Isakovic said. "But that says a lot about the power of film:
that it is a powerful weapon through which stories can be told."
(Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade and
Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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