GRBAVICA

Jasmila Zbanic

screenwriter and directress
GRBAVICA is Jasmila Zbanic’s first feature film.

Zbanic began making films in 1997 when she founded the artist's association “Deblokada”, through which she produced, wrote and directed numerous documentaries, video works and shorts. Her work has been screened in film festivals and exhibitions worldwide. Highlights include her short BIRTHDAY (part of the omnibus film LOST & FOUND), a look at the different paths taken by two young girls - one Croatian, one Bosniak; the 2002 documentary RED RUBBER BOOTS, which follows Bosnian mothers searching for their children; and documentary IMAGES FROM THE CORNER, a moving personal account of a young woman seriously wounded during the war who watched in pain as a foreign photographer snap pictures of her.
Born in Sarajevo in 1974, Zbanic is a graduate of the her native city’s Academy of Dramatic Arts, department for theater and film directing. Before filmmaking, she also worked as a puppeteer in the Vermont-based "Bread and Puppet" Theater and as a clown in a Lee De Long workshop.

>> Interview
with Jasmila Zbanic

Directors statement

I am fascinated by everyday life, but compared to war, it can seem ordinary, non-dramatic, evenbanal. Yet when the surface of this everyday life is scratched, the whole power of human emotions -- past, present and future -- starts to leak out.

GRBAVICA is first of all a story about LOVE. About love that is not pure, because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair. It's also about VICTIMS who, though they did not com-mit any crime, they are still not entirely innocent in relation to future generations. GRBAVICA isalso about TRUTH, a cosmic power necessary to progress, and very much needed by society inBosnia and Herzegovina who must strive to reach maturity.