Boris Gavrilović

2021. When 22-year-old Vitaly leaves his mother Tetyana and his beloved sister Eugenia behind in Ukraine, he dreams of starting a new life in Munich, Germany. Struggling to find where he belongs in a foreign country, he eventually joins a student theater group. Everything changes with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as Eugenia and Tetyana are forced to flee. Overnight, two harsh realities land on Vitaly’s doorstep: the global political situation and his own family conflicts.

The author travels to a forest near Srebrenica, where Irvin Mujčić lives in a small camp. There, she learns that he survived the genocide as a child and returned to Srebrenica in 2014, when he began building a small camp in the forest with the help of the local community.

After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, many refugees are stranded in the non-EU state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. One of them is 15-year-old Nahid. The girl finds some warmth and encouragement with Ferida, who lives in one of the border villages - and observes how people return to their tent accommodations after the pushbacks. The memories of her own civil war past slowly come back to her.

Martina is a good immigrant. At least she has always done her best to be perceived as such. But then she meets the young Dunja during a short vacation at Lake Starnberg. She is self-confident, non-conformist and, above all, she stands by her Yugoslavian origins - in contrast to Martina. Suddenly, Martina is forced to confront a part of her identity that she has repressed all her life.