Review of Grbavica

A very touching story full of really exact details of daily routine in Sarajevo nowadays and a very typical atmosphere of a family without men just can't leave you indifferent whether you believe or not that Bosnian war was an inner affair of the former Yugoslavia without any Western participation, etc. The countries after wars or revolutions are full of women who can't re-start their private lives broken by some shock. The last scene in which the protagonist's daughter Sara (definitely named after Sarajevo!) together with her classmates sings a patriotic song dedicated to the capital of Bosnia makes recall Leo Tolstoy's "Patriotism is the last shelter of bastards" - well, I don't think so, yet patriotism may be really the last shelter of unhappy people. With all this very few people in the audience can notice that the protagonist Esma played by Kusturica's actress Mirijana Karanovic is a little bit too old for this role. Esma (as she recalls her student's years before the Bosnian war) should be not about 50 but about 34-35, if not of the same age as the film director Jasmila Zbanic, and she can't say jokingly "I swear by Tito!" since that generation didn't feel the "Titoism" that much (Esma should be about 6-7 years old when Tito died). Jasmila Zbanic and her European producers could hardly notice it but ... can they count??? Helas, being exact is like being responsible which is getting rare in our civilization. All the rest social and historic details known only to Yugoslavians are beyond my own knowledge. Well, can the spectators count, especially if they are members of jury in Berlinale?!