Section: Spectrum

BALADA

A Ballad

Aida Begić
BA/FR, 2022, 116 Min

Meri wants a new life. And to regain custody of her daughter. Yet everyone who comes to her aid only has their own freedom in mind; from her overbearing mother Zafira to sleazy lawyer Samir and hairdresser Adela, the latter no stranger to resorting to weapons in order to enforce her rights. A portrait of an emancipation dilemma that is both deeply rooted in everyday Bosnian culture and doesn’t hesitate to flout the conventions of art house cinema with its narrative innovations.

 Nothing about the war this time. In her latest film, shot in trying conditions given the Corona restrictions in force at the time, Aida Begić portrays a woman “who is supposed to follow her dream, but first she has to find out what her dream is.” With a grainy handheld camera, parallel narrative threads, and associative flashbacks, the film engages in a cost-benefit analysis of the favours humans do for one another and the price extracted in return. Begić loosely adapts the plot of a 17th-century South Slavic folk ballad, the Hasanaginica, for the present day. The poem, about a woman whose husband chases her out of his castle without her children after she refused to accompany him to the battlefield, subsequently remarries and later dies of grief, was translated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into German as "Klaggesang von der edlen Frau des Asan Aga”. Here things don’t end quite as dramatically as they did back then. And nevertheless, before she finds her proverbial role, Begić's anti-heroine has to endure a number of trials held in store for her by what is a highly patriarchal society. Displaying a closeness to her people, the multi-award-winning director (“Snow”, “Children of Sarajevo”) shows a deliberate willingness to experiment that sees her deviate from classic auteur and festival film, reaping the enthusiasm of local audiences in Sarajevo as a result: “If I find it hard to watch one serious film after another, how can I expect, say, my aunt to go to the cinema and really enjoy it? In Bosnia, we are basically forcing people to watch their own lives on the screen. But this film is funny and light, and I am so proud of that.”

Text: Bernd Buder
English: Peter Rickerby

Obenkino: original version with English subtitles.

Glad-House: original version with English subtitles + German simultaneous translation

 

Drehbuch
AIDA BEGIC
Kamera
EROL ZUBCEVIC
Ton
IGOR CAMO
Schnitt
REDZINALD SIMEK
Ausstattung
EMINA KUJUNDZIC
Darsteller
MARIJA PIKIC, JASNA ZALICA, SLAVEN VIDAK, LANA STANISIC, ENES KOZLICIC
Produzent
ADIS DJAPO
Produktion
FILM HOUSE SARAJEVO
Aida Begić

Aida Begić - Aida Begić, born May 9, 1976 in Sarajevo, is a Bosnian film director and screenwriter.

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