‘Fahrudin’, an animated documentary about a boy who survived a mass execution during the Srebrenica genocide in 1995, produced by BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, was premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Some of the crew of ‘Fahrudin’ film, with BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina staff and Fahrudin Muminovic. Photo: BIRN.
The 20-minute film ‘Fahrudin’ received a standing ovation from the audience when it was screened for a cinema audience for the first time on Wednesday evening at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
The film tells the real-life story of what
The film tells the real-life story of what seven-year-old Fahrudin Muminovic experienced during the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
As Bosnian Serb troops closed in, he and his father Mehmed hid in a war-ravaged village but were found and taken to an execution site in Orahovac. The boy survived, despite being wounded, but his father died. In the film, his cry for his slain father, coming from beneath a pile of bodies, momentarily causes the executioners to halt.
After the shooting, a van driver who witnessed what happened defied the troops and took the wounded boy away with him. The film shows the van carrying Fahrudin setting off into an uncertain future as volleys of gunfire echo in the darkness.
Director and screenwriter Alen Drljevic said
Director and screenwriter Alen Drljevic said that the film “combines documentary and animation, a form very close to childhood that can convey just how young Fahrudin was when he survived the horrors of the genocide”.
The film was produced by BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, based on an idea by Denis Dzidic, the executive director of BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ahead of the premiere, Dzidic said that the story of Fahrudin had previously been told by BIRN journalists in other formats, but that it was important to bring the horror of what he experienced to the screen as well.
“The story of Srebrenica is very often reduced to numbers. To a single word – genocide. We don’t talk about testimonies that much, we don’t delve into people’s human experiences,” Dzidic said.
Source: balkaninsight.com
