An acutely painful and powerful film that has a documentary feel and fact-based events (and a few real-life characters like war criminal Mladic) centering on the Srebrenica massacre during the Balkan conflicts.
The plain and documentary-style of filming makes the story quietly gripping but there are self-consciously ‘artistic cinematic’ decisions also made which add to the power of the film, such as the utter echoing stillness and silence when Aida, after the conflict has ended, goes to the school where her husband and sons were gunned down. And that scene, although we are mentally prepared for it, is remarkably powerful as we do not see the actual slaughter, just the lead-up with the men being offloaded from the trucks into the gymnasium, apparently unaware of what is about to happen and we then see machine guns projecting and starting to fire from the upper gallery of the room, after which we cut away. Superbly and grimly effective.
The portrayal of the hapless and helpless Dutch UN troops is also starkly powerful, particularly in the reminding of their youth and the trauma that being witnesses to the terror has upon them and how there was the awful realization that they were meant to be there to help but could not.
A wonderful piece of work.