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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
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href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/movies/quo-vadis-aida-review.html">nytimes.com</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ Review: Life and Death
in Srebrenica</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">A.O. Scott</div>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">5-7 minutes</div>
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<p>Critic’s Pick</p>
<p id="article-summary">Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Oscar
entry is the harrowing and rigorous story of a U.N.
translator’s fight to save her family from slaughter.</p>
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alt="Jasna Djuricic is Aida, a high school teacher
turned U.N. translator, in Jasmila
Zbanic’s “Quo Vadis,
Aida?”"
src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/12/arts/00quo-vadis/merlin_184834350_ba3a1af0-53fb-4a5b-b326-dcbc81782727-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"
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<figcaption><span><span>Credit...</span><span><span>Super
LTD</span></span></span></figcaption></figure>
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<p><time datetime="2021-03-12T13:20:04-05:00"><span>Published
March 11, 2021</span><span>Updated March 12, 2021</span></time></p>
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<dt>Quo Vadis, Aida?</dt>
<dd><span>NYT Critic's Pick</span></dd>
<dd>Directed by <span>Jasmila Zbanic</span></dd>
<dd>Drama, History, War</dd>
<dd>1h 41m</dd>
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<p>In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army, under the
command of Gen. Ratko Mladic, overran the town of <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/09/sunday-review/12SREBRENICA.html"
title="">Srebrenica</a>, which had been declared a
safe haven by the United Nations. Muslim civilians
sought refuge at a nearby U.N. base, but were handed
over to Mladic’s soldiers, who separated them by
gender and loaded them into buses and trucks. Around
8,000 men and boys were murdered, their bodies buried
in mass graves, in <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/29/world/massacre-in-bosnia-srebrenica-the-days-of-slaughter.html"
title="">one of the worst atrocitie</a>s of the wars
that convulsed the former Yugoslavia for much of the
decade.</p>
<p>At the time, many in the West wondered how this could
happen — how genocidal violence could erupt in Europe
barely 50 years after the end of World War II. “Quo
Vadis, Aida?,” Jasmila Zbanic’s unsparing and
astonishing new film, shows precisely how. This isn’t
the same as explaining why, though Zbanic’s granular,
hour-by-hour, lightly fictionalized dramatization of
the events leading up to the massacre sheds some
glancing light on that question.</p>
<p>Mladic (Boris Isakovic) is an unnervingly familiar
figure. A self-infatuated bully who travels everywhere
with a cameraman, he punctuates his displays of power
with litanies of grievance. But the movie isn’t really
about him. He and his officers may be the authors of
the nightmare, but the viewer suffers through it in
the company of Aida Selmanagic (Jasna Duricic), who
works as a translator for the U.N.</p>
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<p>In her previous life, Aida was a teacher. Her
husband, Nihad (Izudin Bajrovic), was the principal of
the local high school. At one especially tense moment,
she and a Serb soldier exchange polite greetings: he’s
a former student, who sends regards to Aida’s sons,
Hamdija (Boris Ler) and Sejo (Dino Bajrovic). That
encounter is one of several reminders of the prewar
normal, when Serbs and Muslims lived side by side and
Aida and her family pursued an uneventful middle-class
existence. A flashback shows her participating in a
whimsical pageant devoted to “Eastern Bosnia’s best
hairstyle.”</p>
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<p>Now, she runs an increasingly desperate gantlet of
contradictory demands. Her U.N. identification badge
affords her some protection, which she tries to extend
to her husband and children. She persuades Nihad to
volunteer as a civilian delegate alongside the U.N.
commander in farcical negotiations with Mladic, and
uses her access to restricted areas of the base to
find hiding places for Sejo and Hamdija.</p>
<p>In her official capacity, Aida dutifully translates
Serbian lies and U.N. equivocations, a role that
becomes both horrific and absurd. She must convey to
the panicked masses at the base — some of them her
friends and neighbors — reassurances that she knows to
be false. Amid the promises of safety, she can see
clearly what is about to happen.</p>
<p>Duricic’s performance is somehow both charismatic and
self-effacing. Aida is tenacious and resourceful, and
also terrified and overwhelmed by circumstances. The
story she is caught up in moves swiftly and
relentlessly, but sometimes nothing seems to move at
all. The victims-in-waiting are trapped. Their
ostensible protectors are paralyzed, and the predators
are in no particular hurry. Who can stop them?</p>
<p>There is relentless, dread-fueled suspense here, and
a kind of procedural efficiency that reminds me of
Paul Greengrass’s fact-based films, like <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/02/movies/film-festival-reviews-bloody-sunday-in-londonderry.html"
title="">“Bloody Sunday”</a> and <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/movies/defiance-under-fire-paul-greengrasss-harrowing-united-93.html"
title="">“United 93.”</a> The rigorous honesty of
“Quo Vadis, Aida?” is harrowing, partly because it
subverts many of the expectations that quietly attach
themselves to movies about historical trauma. We often
watch them not to be confronted with the cruelty of
history, but to be comforted with redemptive tales of
resistance, resilience and heroism.</p>
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<p>Aida may have some of those qualities, but her brave
attempts to escape only emphasize how trapped she
really is. The title asks where she is going. The
available answers are grim. If she can save herself,
can she also save her family? And if so, what about
the thousands of others whose lives are in peril?</p>
<p>Her situation is dramatized with exquisite empathy.
Pity isn’t the only emotion in play; it does battle
with shame and disgust. The failure of the U.N. is
almost as appalling as Mladic’s viciousness. The
rule-bound, well-meaning Dutch officers in charge of
the base become the general’s hostages and then his
accomplices. The massacre was a war crime supervised
by peacekeepers — a failure of institutional resolve,
of humanity, of civilization.</p>
<p>Eventually, Mladic was tried in The Hague and
sentenced to life in prison. The final act of “Quo
Vadis, Aida,” Bosnia and Herzegovina’s official Oscar
entry, makes clear that many other perpetrators
escaped with impunity. The war ended, and some version
of normalcy returned, but Zbanic takes no consolation
in the banal observation that life goes on. It’s true
that time passes, that memory fades, that history is a
record of mercy as well as of savagery. But it’s also
true — as this unforgettable film insists — that loss
is permanent and unanswerable.</p>
<p><strong>Quo Vadis, Aida?</strong><br>
Not rated. In Bosnian, English and Dutch, with
subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In
theaters and on <a
href="https://superltd.com/films/quo-vadis-aida#virtual-cinema"
title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Laemmle’s
Virtual Cinema</a>. Please consult <a
href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/personal-social-activities.html#event"
title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the
guidelines</a> outlined by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention before watching movies inside
theaters.</p>
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