QUO VADIS, AIDA?

★★★★ OUT 22 JANUARY (CURZON HOME CINEMA) / CERT TBC / 103 MINS Jasmila Žbanic DIRECTOR Jasna Djuricic, Izudin Bajrovic, Boris Ler, CAST Dino Bajrovic

Writer-director Jasmila Zbanic refuses to allow the 8,372 Srebrenica civilians massacred by the Bosnian Serb army in July 1995 to become mere statistics in this gut-punching reconstruction. She does so by focusing on the desperate efforts of resourceful teacher Aida (Jasna Djuricic) to protect her husband and sons, while translating for the Dutch UN peacekeeping force left powerless against the murderously self-mythologising Ratko Mladic (Boris Isakovic). Shot with restless immediacy and edited to convey the escalating sense of inevitability, this study in chaos and calculation not only makes compelling viewing, but it also exposes the indifference of an international community that simply turned the other way.