"Grbavica", which is also known as "The Land of My Dreams" and "Esma's Secret" is a co-production between a total of four countries with Bosnia and Herzergovina being the most dominant from the bunch. The film is also, according to imdb, exclusively in the Bosnian language. It runs for pretty much exactly 1.5 hours, which means it is not a long movie by any means. The writer and director is Jasmila Zbanic and she was not a rookie when she shot this film and worked for example on documentaries before, but this was her first "real" big screen project with actors, so surely also a breakthrough project, especially if you take a look at the awards recognition it received. A lot there came from the Berlin Film Festival where the movie had its world premiere apparently and won really big. Three awards is nothing that happens all the time. That much is safe. Impressive feat and those were no consolation prizes either because this trio of trophies also included the Golden Bear, so the most crucial trophy that is awarded there. Gigantic success for Zbanic and nobody can be surprised that she is still a successful filmmaker nowadays over 1.5 decades later as this film is from 2006. It was shown on the big screen again today for a large group of students, so it was a one-time showing only, and I was lucky enough to sneak in with a ticket as well. I do not regret going one bit. The film is worth being seen, not necessarily on the big screen, but also if it is shown on the small screen, I advise you to take the chance and I am sure you will also not be disappointed by the outcome here, even if I would not call it a must-see either. But it is infinitely better than the film that Zbanic had a lot of success with very recently, a film that made much bigger waves even as it was nominated for two BAFTAs and dominated (that even rhymes) the European Film Awards. I will not give you the name as you can check that out for yourself, but I thought that film was really bad at times and criminally overrated and I did not see a lot of artistic impact to it, especially not in terms of writing and the lead actress. But that is another story, another review.
Now let us talk about this movie we have here instead: It was Bosnia's submission to the Oscars only five years after the country won this perhaps biggest award for any international movie, but it did not manage the Oscar nomination. A bit of a pity as I would have been fine with the film getting nominated and I would have imagined the subject also could have been really up the Academy's alley, but maybe I am thinking more of today than back then. The film would probably have better chances nowadays. Zbanic was only around the age of 30 when she made this and her lead actress Mirjana Karanovic was almost 20 years older, namely slightly under 50. I see that she has acted in over 100 projects by now, so very prolific actress to this day. She plays Esma whose name you can read in the alternate title. The co-lead or biggest supporting actress (something in-between) is Luna Zimic Mijovic and sometimes the "Zimic" is left out with her name. She is around the age of 30 now, so you can see she was really quite young there. This was her very first film overall and she also did not give up on acting it seems, but keeps going even if her most recent project is now already from two years ago. Actually, this was not the first time I saw Zimic Mijovic in something, but she played in quite a few German projects even over the years and there I have seen a lot, so also come across her here and there. I think she is not only pretty, but also talented. She surely proves it with this movie and in the end she is also ready to make certain sacrifices if the script requires her to. Well done! I mean that is stuff that to some extent won Anne Hathaway an Oscar, but let's not exaggerate. I hope we will see LZM for many years, if not decades, to come in movies, no matter if we are talking German/Austrian films or international movies, maybe from Eastern Europe like this one here. With the more obvious supporting characters I cannot really say too much. Most of them are male and I am not familiar with the actors, at least not knowingly that I remember their names or remember having seen them in other releases. But they all did a decent job and I think the acting was maybe the film's biggest strength, with Karanovic, but also at least as much with everybody else here.
The script was fine too, but I think you could see here already that escalating the plot is not really Zbanic's biggest strength in terms of writing. You could witness that painfully during her most recent work I talked about earlier, but here it is also visible already. Two key escalations here come out of pretty much nowhere and did not feel well-crafted. One would be the gunpoint scene and honestly before that it always seemed far more important to her to be allowed on the trip with her fellow students than really to find out in detail about her dad. The cutting-hair twist also felt a bit abrupt, but this I did not mean with the second escalation. Said second escalation (or in terms of chronology the first in fact) was when the protagonist is attacked by her boss and the other two come to help her and knock the boss down. This also came out of nowhere. I mean it still made a bit of sense because he was so mad that he did not get the money, but still. Also, if it meant so much to him (plus it was really not a huge sum), then I wonder why he let her make the pick in the first place. That way it was basically a lottery because she knew absolutely nothing about football. Or soccer I should say maybe for the American readers. Still, the anti-betting message is not a surprise, also the irony that he is so mad when without her, he perhaps would not have won anything.
The secret mentioned in the alternate title I liked more. In terms of what is revealed here. I was not as touched as the young woman sitting next to me crying, but I think if we look back with the knowledge of what happened to her, then we think differently of the bus scene in which she is uncomfortable with the guy very close to her or that she is not really playing hard to get with her potential love interest up there when he tries to kiss her, but she really has to build relationships with men from the scratch. All this makes it maybe also a good film for a rewatch. There you will maybe also have a completely different take on the scene when she is in this group with other women who went through similar mayhem as we can guess in the end and now we know about the purpose of this group and what she is doing there and why the instructor says that nobody is forced to talk if they don't want to. And we realize the laughing woman maybe lost her sanity and the other woman who talked a lot found her way to deal with things and the other one who asks for a job to make more money was really hardened apparently from what happened to her, but a similar thing can be said about the main character. She tried to ban it all out of her life, the terrible things that happened back then, but the confrontation with her daughter brought it all back and she finally managed to process the past in a way that she talked about these things in front of the others inside the group. There you see the full gravity from the story here. I mean it was not a light film either before that and there were no scenes where you would laugh with one exception for me maybe, namely when the mother finds out that the daughter told her teacher that the mother is sick, so the teacher would not talk to the mother.
All this was in a way stuff that every child did or at least tried at some point, so the girl's struggles here are not as severe as her mother's, at least not before the revelation that changes everything. It is just normal issues like how the kid is unhappy with her babysitter or how she wants to go on a trip with her class, but we cannot be sure if there is enough money. Interesting though that the children of parents where the man died in battle get a special permission to join everybody without having to pay and there was another inclusion where some children would not have to pay the full price. From a very basic perspective, you could say that this is also a romance film as mother and daughter are meeting men/boys courting them at the same time. With the girl, it was a bit of a violent first meeting there, one that still united them because of their fathers. Or what the girl thought happened to her father. I am getting to the end of my review now and overall I surely want to praise this film. The positive recommendation and thumbs-up was never in doubt. During the watch I felt that this was a good movie where the watch was closer to "great" than to "weak" without a doubt and I am still thinking the same now. Still, I also came to thinking that if you really evaluate some of the inclusions here in terms of the script, then you will find flaws with this film and it is not just minimal flaws (like for example we knew there would be some escalation with the gun coming, but the one they went for was not the best they could have chosen or executed), so I cannot give it a really enthusiastic overall recommendation. Still, as I stated at the start already, I am glad I went to see this and I think that if you have a chance to catch this on television (chances for it to be shown on the big screen again are really small), then go for it and I am positive you will also enjoy the watch, even if "enjoy" is maybe not the right word here given the plot. Finally I want to say, to end with something positive, that I liked the ending. It was a happy one with the girl being inside the bus on her way to the school trip and the mother(s) waving outside. When we see her sing with the others, it was a good moment for the closing credits to roll in and the song we hear there I also liked. So yeah, go see this film. I give it a thumbs-up.
Now let us talk about this movie we have here instead: It was Bosnia's submission to the Oscars only five years after the country won this perhaps biggest award for any international movie, but it did not manage the Oscar nomination. A bit of a pity as I would have been fine with the film getting nominated and I would have imagined the subject also could have been really up the Academy's alley, but maybe I am thinking more of today than back then. The film would probably have better chances nowadays. Zbanic was only around the age of 30 when she made this and her lead actress Mirjana Karanovic was almost 20 years older, namely slightly under 50. I see that she has acted in over 100 projects by now, so very prolific actress to this day. She plays Esma whose name you can read in the alternate title. The co-lead or biggest supporting actress (something in-between) is Luna Zimic Mijovic and sometimes the "Zimic" is left out with her name. She is around the age of 30 now, so you can see she was really quite young there. This was her very first film overall and she also did not give up on acting it seems, but keeps going even if her most recent project is now already from two years ago. Actually, this was not the first time I saw Zimic Mijovic in something, but she played in quite a few German projects even over the years and there I have seen a lot, so also come across her here and there. I think she is not only pretty, but also talented. She surely proves it with this movie and in the end she is also ready to make certain sacrifices if the script requires her to. Well done! I mean that is stuff that to some extent won Anne Hathaway an Oscar, but let's not exaggerate. I hope we will see LZM for many years, if not decades, to come in movies, no matter if we are talking German/Austrian films or international movies, maybe from Eastern Europe like this one here. With the more obvious supporting characters I cannot really say too much. Most of them are male and I am not familiar with the actors, at least not knowingly that I remember their names or remember having seen them in other releases. But they all did a decent job and I think the acting was maybe the film's biggest strength, with Karanovic, but also at least as much with everybody else here.
The script was fine too, but I think you could see here already that escalating the plot is not really Zbanic's biggest strength in terms of writing. You could witness that painfully during her most recent work I talked about earlier, but here it is also visible already. Two key escalations here come out of pretty much nowhere and did not feel well-crafted. One would be the gunpoint scene and honestly before that it always seemed far more important to her to be allowed on the trip with her fellow students than really to find out in detail about her dad. The cutting-hair twist also felt a bit abrupt, but this I did not mean with the second escalation. Said second escalation (or in terms of chronology the first in fact) was when the protagonist is attacked by her boss and the other two come to help her and knock the boss down. This also came out of nowhere. I mean it still made a bit of sense because he was so mad that he did not get the money, but still. Also, if it meant so much to him (plus it was really not a huge sum), then I wonder why he let her make the pick in the first place. That way it was basically a lottery because she knew absolutely nothing about football. Or soccer I should say maybe for the American readers. Still, the anti-betting message is not a surprise, also the irony that he is so mad when without her, he perhaps would not have won anything.
The secret mentioned in the alternate title I liked more. In terms of what is revealed here. I was not as touched as the young woman sitting next to me crying, but I think if we look back with the knowledge of what happened to her, then we think differently of the bus scene in which she is uncomfortable with the guy very close to her or that she is not really playing hard to get with her potential love interest up there when he tries to kiss her, but she really has to build relationships with men from the scratch. All this makes it maybe also a good film for a rewatch. There you will maybe also have a completely different take on the scene when she is in this group with other women who went through similar mayhem as we can guess in the end and now we know about the purpose of this group and what she is doing there and why the instructor says that nobody is forced to talk if they don't want to. And we realize the laughing woman maybe lost her sanity and the other woman who talked a lot found her way to deal with things and the other one who asks for a job to make more money was really hardened apparently from what happened to her, but a similar thing can be said about the main character. She tried to ban it all out of her life, the terrible things that happened back then, but the confrontation with her daughter brought it all back and she finally managed to process the past in a way that she talked about these things in front of the others inside the group. There you see the full gravity from the story here. I mean it was not a light film either before that and there were no scenes where you would laugh with one exception for me maybe, namely when the mother finds out that the daughter told her teacher that the mother is sick, so the teacher would not talk to the mother.
All this was in a way stuff that every child did or at least tried at some point, so the girl's struggles here are not as severe as her mother's, at least not before the revelation that changes everything. It is just normal issues like how the kid is unhappy with her babysitter or how she wants to go on a trip with her class, but we cannot be sure if there is enough money. Interesting though that the children of parents where the man died in battle get a special permission to join everybody without having to pay and there was another inclusion where some children would not have to pay the full price. From a very basic perspective, you could say that this is also a romance film as mother and daughter are meeting men/boys courting them at the same time. With the girl, it was a bit of a violent first meeting there, one that still united them because of their fathers. Or what the girl thought happened to her father. I am getting to the end of my review now and overall I surely want to praise this film. The positive recommendation and thumbs-up was never in doubt. During the watch I felt that this was a good movie where the watch was closer to "great" than to "weak" without a doubt and I am still thinking the same now. Still, I also came to thinking that if you really evaluate some of the inclusions here in terms of the script, then you will find flaws with this film and it is not just minimal flaws (like for example we knew there would be some escalation with the gun coming, but the one they went for was not the best they could have chosen or executed), so I cannot give it a really enthusiastic overall recommendation. Still, as I stated at the start already, I am glad I went to see this and I think that if you have a chance to catch this on television (chances for it to be shown on the big screen again are really small), then go for it and I am positive you will also enjoy the watch, even if "enjoy" is maybe not the right word here given the plot. Finally I want to say, to end with something positive, that I liked the ending. It was a happy one with the girl being inside the bus on her way to the school trip and the mother(s) waving outside. When we see her sing with the others, it was a good moment for the closing credits to roll in and the song we hear there I also liked. So yeah, go see this film. I give it a thumbs-up.