"Grbavica" is the name of a Sarajevo neighborhood which, as the site of a prison camp during the Bosnian War, saw unspeakable violence. Zbanic's shattering film takes place there a decade after the war and centers on Esma, a single mother struggling to forge a life for herself and her 12-year-old daughter amid the aftermath. While Esma takes on a second job working as a waitress in a bar run by a brutish criminal, Sara is intrigued by her new boyfriend's gun, which he has "inherited" from his shaheed, or war hero, father. Sara begs to know about her own father, whom she believes was also a shaheed, but when she must provide documentation of that fact in order to be allowed to go on a class trip for free. Esma's secret, and the true identity of Sara's father, is revealed in a heartbreaking denouement. more at strandreleasing.com 35mm
2006, color, 1 hour 47 minutes, Bosnia-Herzegovina