Int’l Critics Line: Todd McCarthy On Bosnia’s Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’
The nightmarish cruelty of the Bosnian Serbs’ genocidal assault on the Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica in July, 1995 is vividly and nightmarishly rendered in the curiously titled Quo Vadis, Aida? Ferocious and lucid, director Jasmila Zbanic’s film relentlessly pushes to the heart of the matter while accompanying a local UN translator who does everything she can to help while also trying to arrange for the safety of her husband and two sons. It’s a despairing, nay, devastating piece of work that leaves one drained, exhausted, appalled and admiring, which is the desired and only plausible reaction to Bosnia’s International Feature Oscar hopeful.