Lejla Pajić

A young woman caught between love and an opportunity to study abroad; one lost wallet and a chance encounter that opens the possibility of reconciling the past and the present; two friends facing diverging choices and futures; and a call that brings two strangers together make up the four stories set against the Sarajevo skyline and told by women and of women, living in BiH today.

Five uniquely moving films about motherhood—bubbling up in the grocery store, the cemetery, or even a car ride—come together in this omnibus film set in Sarajevo.

Arman is about to turn 18. He was adopted as a baby by Jasna and Senad, who were unable to have children of their own. However, four years after the adoption, Jasna gives birth to Dado. Throughout his life, Arman has had a hard time coping with being an adopted child. Full of explosive energy, he constantly gets in trouble together with his schoolmates. Despite being very intelligent, he is labelled as a problem child. The only place he feels safe and loved is with Jasna’s parents. At the same time, Arman does all he can to save Dado from self-destructing. However, despite everything he does to support his brother, his parents interpret Arman’s involvement incorrectly, and blame him for every trouble with Dado.

What could be a beautiful fairy tale for some - boy meets girl - could also be the beginning of a horror film for Faruk. The young man is crushed between the dark world of his criminal cousins in Sarajevo and the discovery of love. The film powerfully visualises and contrasts a harshness and tenderness experienced and dreamed.

The year is 37 BC. A young Liburnian Volsus is taken by a Roman unit to help in what at first seems a simple task of collecting taxes, but the encounters with local Illyrian tribes soon lead to unexpected turns of events, as they show more resilience to subjugation than meets the eye. We see their archaic, emotional world of quaint and brutal laws and traditions through the eyes of this youngster, regarded by the Romans as a primitive barbarian, and gradually come to understand that their world is not all that different from our own.