It’s 1999 and NATO has invested against Serbia during the Kosovo War. But the protagonists are teenagers who deal with the threat of bombs by creating their own diary through home videos, concentrating on the things that make them still innocent, putting off the hardships of the world: mysterious boys, first kisses and intimate disappointments that mean they’re growing up too, whatever happens out there.
Fiction or reality? Reality and fiction. This is a film that won’t leave anyone aloof. Especially, in light of what we witness daily, and live, in the contemporary world. Sometimes in Ukraine, sometimes in Gaza, sometimes the forgotten revolutions and belic conflicts that are taking over the streets in Africa.
In her first feature, Emilija Gašić films all the bloodshed in the background of the daily life of one family. Three sisters and their young neighbours grow at war’s pace. The tenderness and the beauty we see reminds us of the home movies from the nineties. And this is the trap – we could be watching a documentary giving the format and narrative construction using Hi8 video footage in the recording of that family’s diaries. (Alexandra Ferraz)
