Irina Apelgren

A harsh dose of cinematic realism about a harsh time – the Bosnian War of the 1990s – Juanita Wilson's drama is taken from true stories revealed during the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Samira is a modern schoolteacher in Sarajevo who takes a job in a small country village just as the war is beginning to ramp up. When Serbian soldiers overrun the village, shoot the men and keep the women as laborers (the older ones) and sex objects (the younger ones), Samira is subjected to the basest form of treatment imaginable.

On the day before Easter 2012, the bodies of four teenagers were found by the edge of a lake just outside Skopje. The bodies had been lined up, each with a bullet hole in their head. The boys had been on a fishing trip. The nation was shocked. Rumours run wild. It is a film about a country where life can come to a sudden end without cause or explanation.