Explosive first Bosnian entry wins best foreign language feature Oscar
( 2002-03-25 13:07 ) (7 )

Talk about beginner's luck. The first-ever entry from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Academy Awards, by first-time director Danis Tanovic, won the Oscar Sunday for best foreign language film.

"No Man's Land," also written by Tanovic, is a bittersweet anti-war film about two soldiers, one Bosnian Muslim, the other Serb, who end up stuck in an abandoned trench between the frontlines during the country's 1992-95 war.

Tanovic has said the film's primary objective was "to raise a voice against war."

And raise it he did, garnering unstinting critical praise from around the world for the picture, which was produced with financial help from Italy, Belgium, France, Britain and Slovenia.

"Well, thank you Hollywood," said Tanovic. "This is for my country, for Bosnia, thank you."

The film won best screenplay at both Cannes and the European film awards, and in January it took the Golden Globe for best foreign picture.

"When he was leaving Sarajevo in 1994 he said he had all he needed with him. Now he is proven to have been right," Tanovic's father Mehmed told AFP in an interview after the nomination was announced.

"All he took was his knowledge and it helped him make a film with a universal message," he added.

Tanovic's parents attribute the film's authenticity to the war trauma their son experienced while pouring through the Bosnian army's film archive during the first years of the 42-month-long siege of Sarajevo.

Tanovic shot some 300 hours of footage during his war years in Sarajevo where shelling and sniping by Bosnian Serb forces killed and wounded thousands of civilians, many inside their homes.

Many in Tanovic's hometown of Sarajevo were preparing to watch the Oscars to catch even a glimpse of their favourite son, whose picture broke box office records in post-war Bosnia and brought a glimmer of hope to the Bosnian film community.

"It is the first film distributed after the war that has been seen by more than 200,000 people ... and it is still showing," Medzida Buljubasic, a spokeswoman for "No Man's Land" distributor in Bosnia, Obala Art Center, told AFP.

"Danis's (Tanovic) film is setting the basis of a new reference system for Bosnia's film production and distribution" Buljubasic said.

The film's Oscar win, while by no means a guarantee, has spurred members of the Bosnian film community to pursue their own stories, in hopes of finding financial and critical support, like Tanovic's film did from United Artists, which distributed it in the United States.

"Bosnian cinematography is now recognized because of Danis Tanovic ... of course that helps us access foreign producers with our ideas," Benjamin Filipovic, director and head of the Bosnian Cinematographers' Association, said recently from Sarajevo.