Quo Vadis, Aida?

Jasmila Žbanić made Quo Vadis, Aida? in 2020, twenty-five years after the Srebrenica genocide it documents, and after almost a decade of preparation. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (losing to Another Round) and the BAFTA in the same category. It received the European Film Award for Best Film and Best Director.

July 1995, Srebrenica. Aida (Jasna Đuričić, in a performance that ranks with the best of the decade) is a Bosniak schoolteacher working as a UN translator at the Dutch Battalion compound, where thousands of civilians have fled as Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladić approach the supposed UN-protected enclave. As negotiations between the Dutch commander and the Serb forces collapse, Aida tries to use her UN status to protect her husband and two adult sons among the refugees outside the gates. The film follows her across the day and a half during which the Dutch surrender the compound, the men are separated from the women, and the systematic murder of more than 8,000 Bosniaks begins.

Žbanić's command of detail (the bureaucratic lapses, the abdications of moral authority, the collective agreement to look away) is exact. Žbanić had been working with the Srebrenica material for over a decade before the production; she had previously made the documentary short Images from the Corner (2003) and the feature Grbavica (2006), which won the Golden Bear at Berlin.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The defining cinematic record of Srebrenica, made by a Bosnian director with the moral authority to shape the story. A film that holds international peacekeeping accountable in a way few others have.