18-02-2010

FNE at Berlinale 2010: Competition On the Path (Na putu)

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    BERLIN: Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic has managed the difficult task of following her debut feature Grbavica which won the Golden Bear in 2006 with a second strong film The Path. The 35-year-old director has tackled the difficult subject of the growing radicalism of Islam in Bosnia and how this affects society and personal relationships.

    Set in contemporary Sarajevo a young couple, Luna and Amar, are very much in love and religion is not something that they even think about. Luna is a flight attendant and Amar works on the ground but he loses his job for being drunk. Amar takes a job in a Wahhabis Muslim community some distance from Sarajevo and becomes converted to radical Islam. When Luna comes to visit him she sees that he has fundamentally changed. Amar wants Luna to follow him and his beliefs. Luna sees that religion has brought him peace and stopped his drunkeness but she cannot follow the path of veiled women and religious fundamentalism that he has chosen. It leads Luna to question if she can still love Amar and if she still wants to have his child.

    Zbanic speaking at the press conference said that she became interested in the subject of the film when she was at a party in Sarajevo and a man refused to shake her hand because she was a woman. That was the starting point for her research about what was happening in Bosnian society. She said: "Bosnia and Herzegovina is going through changes in society and in personal relationships. Many people are going into religion. Society is radicalizing. Society has changed because of the war and because Bosnian cannot get European visas. People are asking themselves if they are not Europeans then who are they?"

    The film examines what happens to a young couple when one of them changes. How much tolerance can one person extend to another without losing their own beliefs? What is unusual is that the film raises questions but is not judgmental.

    Zbanic said she wanted to hold a mirror up the changes in Bosnian society. In the end the film asks questions not only about today's Sarajevo but its war-torn past.

    Director: Jasmila Zbanic

    Cast: Zrinka Cvitesic, Leon Lucev, Ermin Bravo, Mirjana Karanovic

    Corpoduction: Bosnia and Herzegovina / Austria / Germany / Croatia

    Worldsales: The Match Factory GmbH