''Quo Vadis, Aida?'' ( '' Where are you going, Aida?'') is a 2020 Bosnian film written, produced and directed by

Jasmila Žbanić Jasmila Žbanić (; born 19 December 1974) is a Bosnian film director, screenwriter and producer, best known for having written and directed '' Quo Vadis, Aida?'' (2020), which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Lan ...

. An international co-production of twelve production companies, the film was shown in the main competition section of the

77th Venice International Film Festival The 77th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 2 to 12 September 2020, albeit in a "more restrained format" due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Australian actress Cate Blanchett was appointed as the President of the Jury. '' The Ti ...

. It was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the

93rd Academy Awards The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released from January 1, 2020, to February 28, 2021, at Union Station in Los Angeles. The ceremony was held on April 25, 202 ...

and won the Award for Best Film at the

34th European Film Awards The 34th European Film Awards were presented in Berlin, Germany on 11 December 2021. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the awards went ahead without an in person audience, taking the form of a hybrid event, including pre-produced and live onl ...

Plot

The film dramatizes the events of the

Srebrenica massacre The Srebrenica massacre ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Masakr u Srebrenici, Масакр у Сребреници), also known as the Srebrenica genocide ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Genocid u Srebrenici, Геноцид у Сребрен ...

, during which Serbian troops sent Bosniak men and boys to death in July 1995 led by Serbian convicted war criminal

Ratko Mladić Ratko Mladić ( sr-Cyrl, Ратко Младић, ; born 12 March 1942) is a Bosnian Serb convicted war criminal and colonel-general who led the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Yugoslav Wars. In 2017, he was found guilty of committing ...

. Named for its protagonist, ''Quo Vadis, Aida?'' exposes the events through the eyes of a mother named Aida, a schoolteacher who works with the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

as a translator. After three and a half years under siege, the town of

Srebrenica Srebrenica ( sr-cyrl, Сребреница, ) is a town and municipality located in the easternmost part of Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a small mountain town, with its main industry being salt mining and a nearby ...

, close to the northeastern Serbian border, was declared a UN safety zone in 1993 and put under the protection of a Dutch battalion working for the UN.

Cast

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

on 3 September 2020. It was also screened at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival on 13 September 2020. In February 2021, Super LTD acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. It was released in the United States through

virtual cinema Virtual cinema is a video-on-demand streaming service facilitated by independent film distributors and art-house theaters to release new films and share profits. Under the service, part of the admission price supports a physically located theater. ...

on 5 March 2021, followed by video on demand on 15 March 2021.

Reception

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, of critic reviews are positive, and the average rating is . The critics consensus on the website states: "''Quo Vadis, Aida?'' uses one woman's heartbreaking conflict to offer a searing account of war's devastating human toll." According to

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 97 out of 100 from 16 critic reviews. It was declared Metacritic's Official Best Movie of 2021 and Best International Movie of 2021. Ryan Gilbey of ''New Statesman'' stated "Žbanić has shaped the factual into an eloquent and conscientious picture that purrs along as suspensefully as any ticking-bomb thriller, using Ðuričić's performance as its engine". Jude Dry of IndieWire wrote that "Žbanić lays bare the deeply human toll of violence and war", and Peter Bradshaw wrote in ''The Guardian'' that "after 25 years, the time has come to look again at the horror of Srebrenica, and Žbanić has done this with clear-eyed compassion and candor". Jessica Kiang for ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' states that "this is not historical revisionism, if anything, ''Quo Vadis, Aida?'' works to un-revise history, re-centering the victims’ plight as the eye of a storm of evils — not only the massacre itself, but the broader evils of institutional failure and international indifference". Kevin Maher writes in ''The Times'' that "it's incendiary, furiously committed film-making from the director

, who also adds an unnerving ending about the burden that Srebrenica survivors still bear." Other critics underline the film's ambiguous ending. "The final act of “Quo Vadis, Aida” ..makes clear that many other perpetrators escaped with impunity," writes film critic A. O. Scott in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. "The war ended, and some version of normalcy returned, but Žbanić takes no consolation in the banal observation that life goes on. It’s true that time passes, that memory fades, that history is a record of mercy as well as of savagery. But it’s also true — as this unforgettable film insists — that loss is permanent and unanswerable."

Accolades

In September 2020, ''Quo Vadis, Aida?'' was selected as the Bosnian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the

, making the shortlist of fifteen films. On 15 March 2021, the film was officially recognized as a nominee in that category. It won the Audience Award at the 50th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Best International Film Award at the 2021

Gothenburg Film Festival Göteborg Film Festival (GFF), formerly Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF), known in English as the Gothenburg Film Festival, formerly Gothenburg International Film Festival, is an annual film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden and the larg ...

. The film was also nominated for and later on won the Best International Film Award at the

36th Independent Spirit Awards The 36th Film Independent Spirit Awards, honoring the best independent films and television series of 2020, were presented by Film Independent on April 22, 2021. Though it was initially intended for the ceremony to air on April 24, 2021, it was ...

. In March 2021,

74th British Academy Film Awards The 74th British Academy Film Awards, also known as the BAFAs (or BAFTAs), were held on 10 and 11 April 2021 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2020 and early 2021. Presented by the British Aca ...

nominated the film for

Best Film Not in the English Language The BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language is given annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and presented at the British Academy Film Awards. The award was first given at the 36th British Academy Film Awards, r ...

and Žbanić earned a nomination in the

Best Director Best Director is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards. It may refer to: Film awards * AACTA Award for Best Direction * Academy Award for Best Director * BA ...

category. In December 2021, ''Quo Vadis, Aida?'' won the Award for Best Film at the

. Also, Žbanić won the Award for Best Director and

Jasna Đuričić Jasna Đuričić (; born 16 April 1966) is a Serbian actress and academic, best known for playing the titular role in the Bosnian film '' Quo Vadis, Aida?'', which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign International Feature Film i ...

won the Award for Best Actress at the same awards.

Awards

References

External links