Original subtitles

This film contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

This is me, Alisa, eight years old in 1991.

It was a carefree time before it all started.

Back then, my dad filmed all the time, especially me.

I lived in Srebrenica.

My mum is Serbian, my dad is Bosnian.

We never cared.

Until Yugoslavia collapsed.

Early April 1992, the first bombs fell over Sarajevo.

It is the beginning of the war in Bosnia.

When the war breaks out, everything changes.

My parents decide that I will stay with my grandparents in Serbia,

in Ljubovija, because I am safe there.

I stay separated from my parents for the rest of the war.

There are many things we don't talk about in my family -

first and foremost, the Bosnian war.

We didn't talk about it while it happened, nor did we afterwards.

The only thing I have left is a VHS tape that my dad filmed for me,

and I still have so many questions. This is why I am doing this journey,

mostly in search of one person - Sejfudin Smajlovic, my father.

HE SINGS

HE SINGS

Ooh!

WATER RUNS

I remember, one morning, I was sleeping, and he came,

he kissed me, and he left.

That's it. It's complete blank after that.

PHONE LINE RINGS

Sofie, how was your last day of school?

Good.

Very nice.

Are you excited to go to Serbia this summer?

What do you want to do there?

I want to swim in the river.

- In Drina, River Drina? - Uh-huh.

And get ice cream.

- Get ice cream? - Uh-huh. - Very nice. I can't wait also.

I wonder why my father decided to return to Srebrenica.

It would have been much safer for him to stay away from Bosnia.

Ciao, Mama!

SHE STUTTERS

- Mm-hm. - Um...

SHE STUTTERS

My mother is Serbian, my father Bosnian.

It was a so-called "mixed marriage",

like over 50% of marriages in former Yugoslavia.

Since the beginning of the war, in 1992, this had been a problem.

How did my parents live through those years?

Did they try to still have fun, to love, to celebrate life,

even whilst exposed to the constant risk of losing it?

Or did they try just to survive?

MEN SHOUT AND LAUGH ON AUDIO

Who is that?

That's my dad. That's your grandfather.

SHE CHUCKLES

Do you think I look like him?

You don't think I look like him?

- Cos I can't see the colours. - You can't see the col...

Cos this tape is very, very old.

- Wow. - Mm-hm.

So my dad, he made this tape for me, OK,

during the war cos I didn't live with him.

How did he send you the tape?

Well, he sent it through someone that I don't know.

I'm going to try to find out. Now when we go to Ljubovija

and Srebrenica, I'll try to ask someone, maybe some of his friends.

Why did he show you all those people?

He was just showing me how people lived there in this town,

in Srebrenica, during the war.

I don't know who they are,

but he was showing me where his shop used to be.

He used to fix shoes.

He used to have his own shop, so he said,

"This is the building where my shop was

"and now it's a butcher shop."

What colour hair does he have? Does he have like your hair?

Um... He had like brownish hair.

- A little bit darker than mine, like yours. - Like mine?

- But he had blue eyes, like me. - Oh. - Yeah.

SHE CHUCKLES

- So you have his blue eyes, I have his hair? - That's right.

SHE LAUGHS

You see, you have something from him too.

THEY LAUGH

Radio Deutsche Welle.

Reports circulated that small groups of Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces

were committing acts of ethnic cleansing on non-Serb populations.

Innocent civilians suffered. Some died as they sat

peacefully at home, waiting for the sound of the jets to diminish.

Bosnians now predict a long, agonising civil war.

Finally, it's that time of the year when we all go back

to my grandmother's place in Ljubovija, Serbia.

My mum, my aunt, my daughter and me -

we all spend our summers there.

This year, I will leave Sofia with them

and go in search of my dad's story.

PHONE LINE RINGS

SHE LAUGHS

SHE LAUGHS

PHONE LINE RINGS

SHE LAUGHS

SHE LAUGHS

SHE LAUGHS

SHE SQUEALS

SHE GIGGLES

I have now decided to stay here in Srebrenica.

You are now under the protection of the UN forces.

But a town built for 4,000 is now refuge

and prison to 40,000 in the so-called safe haven of Srebrenica.

BELL TOLLS, PRAYER CHANT

HE TUNES RADIO

SHE LAUGHS

THEY LAUGH

SHE LAUGHS

Ah!

Mm-hm.

Mm.

LAPTOP AUDIO PLAYS

MOVIE SOUNDTRACK PLAYS

During the war, I lived only 16km away from my parents

and from Srebrenica, but on the other side

of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, impassable at the time.

I spent all the war years in Ljubovija,

at my grandparents' place.

CLOCK TICKS

Mm-hm.

Mm-hm.

Mm-hm.

MUSIC PLAYS ON RADIO

MUSIC STOPS

I discover things about my father

and mother I had absolutely no idea of.

I do not judge either of them.

I'm an adult and can understand both of them.

I would have liked things to have been different between them,

but it is too late now to take one side.

And in any case, they never asked me what I thought about their break-up.

I was never included in their decision to divorce.

I was not even in Srebrenica at the time.

LIVELY CHATTER

THEY LAUGH

Uh-huh.

SHE LAUGHS

The 17-truck convoy was carrying 137 tonnes of food

and medical aid for the besieged Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica.

The Serbs refused to allow the humanitarian aid

across the river into Bosnia to relieve the starving in Srebrenica.

Srebrenica has been surrounded by Serbian forces for several months.

Aid workers called conditions in the town "abysmal".

The Serb-controlled water plant outside the town has been destroyed,

there's no electricity.

Red Cross workers say it's only a matter of weeks before typhoid

and dysentery attack here, too.

The Serbs don't bother to bombard this city any more.

It's cheaper to starve the people into submission.

UN Commander Rose believes the Bosnian Serbs will agree to

sign up to the ceasefire proposed last week.

There's goodwill on both sides

and I'm hopeful we're going to get some conclusion by the weekend.

Even General Mladic, a key figure in any ceasefire,

said the sticking points were minor, resolvable.

SHE CHUCKLES

MUSIC PLAYS FROM VIDEO

MUSIC STOPS

CLOCK TICKS

This war has shaped my whole life. It has no beginning and no end.

My grandmother asked me

to stop thinking about what happened during the war.

I, however, before following her advice,

need to dive a little deeper, still.

Because this war has left deep marks on all of us -

on my grandma, my mum, my aunt and me.

It will probably leave marks on Sofia as well.

CHATTER AND LAUGHTER

I'll call you from Sarajevo, OK?

- OK. - I'm going to be there just a few days.

- For how long? A week? - No, just a few days.

- Five days? - Three days. - Three days? - Yes. - OK. - OK.

- I love you. - I love you, too. - Miss you. Miss you.

Love you, love you, miss you, miss you.

Right now, I have decided not to talk to Sofia about the war

that happened in former Yugoslavia.

She's very young. I think that, when Sofia grows up,

I'll be able to explain to her things

in a way where she will understand.

Just because this war happened doesn't mean

that she needs to hate the world.

Oh!

SHE LAUGHS

SHE LAUGHS

THEY SING

The Dutch battalion is now moving north towards Potocari,

with some estimations of about 7,000 refugees moving up the road

towards Potocari itself.

Directed by military leader Ratko Mladic, soldiers separated

Muslim men and boys from their wives, sisters and daughters.

But when they reached Muslim territory,

only women and children emerged.

The men of Srebrenica had disappeared.

I learned that in the days following the fall of Srebrenica,

thousands of people tried to escape through the forest to reach

the free territory of Tuzla.

A very long column of people forms in the forest,

walking for days through the woods without orientation,

hoping to go in the right direction.

My mum is among them.

GUNFIRE

SOBBING

Nobody told me how he was killed

because a lot of people died that probably were with him.

At one point in my life, I wanted to imagine what he went through.

But I realised that other things are more important -

to know how he was, really,

to hear some stories from his friends.

Those are deeper things for me.

Over 8,000 Muslim men and boys massacred in Srebrenica.

After burying them in mass graves,

troops later dug them up

and scattered their body parts to hide their war crimes.

It is crazy how war makes some people turn into monsters.

It's typical from the war.

You know, it's like, "Now I have the opportunity to say whatever

"I wanted to say that I couldn't say before." You know.

You know, "I have opportunity to hate who I wanted to hate."

It is so surreal to hear these things, you know?

And to me, everything behind that is hate.

It is what you bring out of your house,

what you heard out of other people, your parents or whatever.

You know, it is just... It's incredible.

It is beyond me that they even, these people who live

together with each other, allow their selves to be involved in that.

It is insane to me how someone can just change overnight, you know?

I mean, it's... I cannot understand that fully.

I'm trying in my mind to, but there's no...there's no

understanding because it's not the right thing.

Around 8,000 Bosnians are killed in about ten days.

Even today, not all victims have been identified.

Every year on July 11th,

newly identified victims are buried in a memorial cemetery in Potocari.

INAUDIBLE

INDISTINCT CHATTER

- I'm from MSF. - MSF. Yes. - Christine.

Oh, really!

Oh, my goodness!

Yeah, you...

Yes. MSF. Remember?

Oh, yes!

Ha-ha!

Oh, my God!

I never would have recognised you!

Oh, my God!

Amazing, really, to see you.

- When did you leave? - In '95.

- I went to the...by the... - By the woods.

Woods.

17 days. Yeah.

- This is my daughter, Alisa. - Hi, nice to meet you.

No!

PEOPLE RECITE PRAYERS

It's after the deportation,

on 12th and 13th...

Why do you come back here?

- I come back because, the people I'm meeting here... - Mm-hm.

- ..like the medical staff from the hospital... - Uh-huh.

..or others, understand best what we all together have been through.

I need to share with people who have gone through this as well.

And I want to show also this is not forgotten,

- and I will never forget. - Yeah. - Never forget.

It changed my life, and took me many years to understand that

it was not my fault that the enclave fell and so many people were killed.

- When did you arrive to Srebrenica? - 24th of June.

- In 1995? - Yes. Yes.

- OK. - Yes. Yes. - OK. OK.

- And then the bombing started. - Yes. - So...

And your mother was walking in one of the ambulantes

around Srebrenica, and when I met her yesterday,

- it was wonderful to meet her. - Yes. Yes.

Do you have any memory of the day when the troops came in,

into Srebrenica?

Yes. Yes.

Actually, I remember one situation, on the 13th of July,

when a Bosnian-Serbian soldier came to me, fully armed,

and with a German dog.

And he was followed by a Muslim man

who was really...you could read in his eyes

he was so stressed and so fearful.

And he had his baby on his arm.

It was maybe a year or so.

And I did not speak Bosnian,

but I understood that the father said he has nobody for the baby.

The mother was gone missing or dead,

and he wanted to give me that baby.

Um...

And it wasn't being said,

but I knew in that moment that he was supposed to be killed.

He has been found in a mass grave later.

And he gave me his baby.

And this is, for me, the most symbolic situation...

- Mm. - ..the separation of a child from his father.

And I...

Yeah, I think, I cannot imagine the pain

you must feel by having lost your father.

Yes.

- I think for ten years, not knowing where he was... - Yeah.

- I think that was the worst. - Yeah.

And I suffered a lot through that period, just because I didn't have

- comfort from anyone to talk to me about it. - Yeah.

You know, I kind of dealt with my pain by myself.

OK. That must be difficult.

- And... It was. It was very, very hard. - Yeah.

And then when I found out, in 2005, that they found him,

- it was... You know, I was very, very sad. - Mm-hm.

- But it was a relief to... - Yes.

..you know, to have a grave to go to.

- Yeah. - I think that's when that...insane,

tremendous pain kind of started to slowly disappear

- because I think it's the worst when you don't know... - Yeah.

- ..where someone is, you know? - Yeah. - Um...

But do you feel that you can come to peace today?

Um, I do.

You know why?

- Because I have accepted... - Yeah. - ..what has happened.

And I am so grateful to him

- that he made this tape for me. - Yes.

I mean, that's like...

- For me, it's like you found a piece of gold. - Yeah. Yeah.

And I know that my dad would be very happy that I'm doing this, you know.

PEOPLE CHAT ANIMATEDLY

Sejfo wanted me to make this journey to come and find him,

to find out who he was.

Above all, he wanted me to learn to enjoy every moment of life,

and to care for others as he did.

He madly loved a Serbian woman, he unconditionally loved me,

his Bosnian-Serb daughter.

He had friends of every religion and ethnicity until his end.

For me, this is what remains of him,

along with the freedom of not having to choose.

Because I am a daughter of that freedom.

My father made me free to exist above differences,

to dance on hate, to ignore

the scepticism my Serbian accent causes in some,

and my Bosnian surname in others.

It showed me the way to trample on prejudice

and keep all ethnic, religious and racial hate away from me.

This is what he passed on to me,

and this is what I wish to pass on to Sofia.