Previous Oscar winner Danis Tanovic, who won an Oscar for “No Man’s Land” movie in 2002, revisits the theme of the impact of the Balkans civil war of the 1990s in “Death in Sarajevo”, which premiered at this year’s Berlinale, where it won a Silver Bear and will compete at the 88th Academy Awards (Oscars) on Feb. 26 in the “Best Foreign Film” category on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Movie is set in the fictional Hotel Europa, modeled on Sarajevo’s famous Holiday Inn, where diplomats and members of the international press corps stayed during the war. Set in 2014 on the day of the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Austro-Hungarian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the film explores the way the complex history of the Balkans continues to affect people and their interactions.
Death in Sarajevo presents a damning allegory for modern Europe. The hotel is bankrupt, the staff are going on strike. The manager – deftly played by Bajrovic – sees the disaster coming, but is unable to shake his obsession with the past. He personally escorts the EU bigwig (Jacques Weber) to his rooms in “The Olympic apartment”.
Star power has helped the hotel through tough times. But it runs because people do the dirty work and its in contrasting the glossy nothing of the hotel’s facade with the stinks and squeals from the engine room that Danis Tanovic really excels. The basement club is sub-let to a suited thug who holds the hotel ransom. He’s been gambling all night and is in celebratory mood. The dancers have been told to dress like Ferdinand’s wife, Countess Sophie (who was killed by a bullet to the chest during the attack on her husband). Upstairs a security guard, who’s taken it upon himself to place cameras in the bigwig’s suite, is coked up and harried, nagged by a wife who desires the latest flashy import: a floral three-seat sofa. Manager Omer strides between worlds, like High Rise’s Dr Robert Laing. He’s a player at every level, but belongs in none of them. Lamija, his deputy, is less proficient. Her mum has worked the laundry for 30 years and, after agreeing to lead the strike, could be under threat from the management’s goons. She’s made life at the hotel personal. It’ll make her suffer.
The rooftop is a satire-free zone. Tanovic uses the guests on the TV set to introduce his own take on Bosnia-Herzegovina’s history and – ahead of the country’s application for inclusion in the EU – make his own appeal for some sort of unification. A furious row between the journalist and Princip about whether the Archduke’s killer was a rebel hero or a murderer simmers down into something approaching seduction. The mood is broken by Princip fretting about who Ferdinand’s assassin would target now. A banker maybe? “No assassination could change anything today,” he says, glumly.
Back in the penthouse the French EU man practices his speech. He rambles to himself about the nature of Europe, the triumphs it stumbles upon and the deaths that it keeps recovering from, again and again and again. Meanwhile, the hotel simmers beneath him, on the point of melting into chaos once more.
