I want to create films that will speak to different parts of our hearts and brains, stories told from a different angle.
— Jasmila Zbanic
When I go to a cinema, I don't care if the film is made by a man or a woman as long as it tells me a story, as long as it offers pictures that shed light on my existence, characters I can identify with, jokes I can laugh at.
I did go to a film school in Sarajevo. I studied film and theatre directing. There was a war raging in the country while I was studying, and we did not have neither electricity nor cinemas for three and a half years.
In my country, though it is very patriarchal and male-dominated, the public enjoys women-directed movies.
My generation has to deal with how to overcome a trauma, how to overcome destruction, and how to tell the truth to the next generation.
Nature and other human beings are something you have to respect and you need.
Music, for me, in a film is never... I don't want to use music as a slave of the image. I want music to be art, or a body in itself to give something to the film.
In Bosnia, there are no 35mm cameras. There are no film labs.
It was important to feel that you were resisting the fascism around you. But we had no electricity to watch movies. We were imagining our movies.
As a filmgoer and a filmmaker, I want to participate and tell stories of woman and man that will move us forward.
As a child, I used to 'torture' other kids by making them be in my shows. I would sell tickets to neighbors and organize performances.
I have always written - since I was a kid. I might say that I am essentially a writer who is bored to be alone in the room writing. I need to have more people around me. So, I 'write' with a film camera and have a party at the same time by having a bunch of people around.
Always, for me, when I am dealing with subjects related to my country that are very emotional, I have to find the right tone and distance because, obviously, I start with anger, asking 'why that happened' and 'why it is still happening.' I work to rise above my personal anger but still stay connected to my emotions. That's a big challenge.
I want to show that drama doesn't lie only in blood and destroyed buildings but in daily life, in ordinary human beings.
The more empathy you have and the more connected you are to society, the better off you'll be.
The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal.
'Grbavica' is first of all a story about love, about love that is not pure because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair.
I grew up during the shift to socialism, and since it was my childhood, I used to think that everything was beautiful and human.
Film is the most liberal of arts and, at the same time, it can be a very conservative art. Money that is involved in filmmaking is distributed mostly to men, thus creating a celluloid ceiling for women.
I am successful if I manage to make a film that I want and if it works emotionally for the audience and if it stays with them after the screening and means something for them. Awards or money have symbolic power.
If you love your film, you have to fight for it.
As a woman filmmaker in Bosnia, I have more privileges than disadvantages. I feel I can do more than my male colleagues with a motherly approach rather than a male approach.
Cinema connects people: they respond as a group, you feel you are not alone, and you see you are not alone. Capitalism is destroying this social aspect of films, and even empathy, by creating the illusion that you are more important than the next person: 'You will buy this because you are special.' That is horrible.
'For Those Who Can Tell No Tales' is a story of memory and the energy of places that remain full of drama, pain, and denial.
In the case of Bosnia, studies showed that turning to religion was a consequence of post-war depression and dissatisfaction.
I have never understood why people identify with criminals: even if your father and grandfather were criminal, you have to find a way to be free.
What I'm trying to do with my work is to break open things that are sealed, that are under siege.
