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January 5, 2007

Film that shows pain of Balkan war wins ecumenical prize

by Ecumenical News International 

GENEVA — Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic’s film “Grbavica,” portraying the lingering impact of the systematic rape of Bosnian women during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has won the European John Templeton Film Award for 2006. 
 
     “Grbavica is a neighborhood just across from the building where I live” in Sarajevo, director Zbanic said in an interview on the Web site. “During the war this area was held under siege by the Serbo-Montenegrin Army, and transformed into a special war camp where the population was tortured.”  
 
     After the start of the conflict, she said, “I realized that I was living in a war, in which sex was used as part of a war strategy to humiliate women and thereby cause the destruction of an ethnic group. Twenty thousand women were systematically raped in Bosnia during the war.”  
 
     The prize is awarded annually in the name of the John Templeton Foundation by Interfilm (the International Interchurch Film Organization), and the Geneva-based Conference of European Churches (CEC) to a film that broaches spiritual and social questions and is judged to have high artistic merit. 
 
     “Without presenting images of past atrocities, Jasmila Zbanic’s aesthetic strategy succeeds in evoking a traumatizing experience through gestures, physical expressions and moments of silence,” CEC said in a Jan. 5 statement announcing the prize. 
 
     Zbanic’s portrayal of how a single mother and her 12-year-old daughter cope with the aftermath of the Bosnian war, won the top Golden Bear award and the Ecumenical Jury prize at the 2006 Berlin film festival. 
 
     “The film captures the real dilemmas of the aftermath of a tragic ethnic conflict; the economic problems facing single parents; the continuing social divisions in a society struggling to come to terms with the past; but overall is the enduring love of a parent
for her child and the child for her parent,” the CEC statement noted.  
 
     “Grbavica” was selected for the European John Templeton Film Prize from a shortlist of six films that had all been recognized by ecumenical juries during 2006. The prize carries an award of $13,000 and a certificate. 
 
     The award ceremony is scheduled for Feb. 11, during the 57th Berlin Film Festival.