This article was originally appeared in New York Transatlantic.
Artists and politicians have noted that the bloody 20th century began and ended in Sarajevo. More than one hundred years have passed since 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip triggered the First World War with a pistol shot, and 25 have passed since the Bosnian war began. Debates about both wars—whether Princip was freedom fighter or a terrorist, whether Serbs were aggressors or victims—are still debated in Bosnia-Herzegovina as if they happened yesterday.
Bosnian Oscar-winner Danis Tanović’s Smrt u Sarajevu (Death in Sarajevo) made its US premiere at the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival on April 15. The film satirizes and confronts life in modern day Bosnia: a life where contests over the past overshadow a present plagued by corruption and stagnation.
Loosely inspired by Bernard-Henri Lévy’s play “Hotel Europe,” the film takes place on June 28, 2014, at the fictional Hotel Europa in Sarajevo, spanning from the roof to the basement strip club. The staff is preparing for the 100th Anniversary Commemoration of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand amid a heated debate over the meaning of the event, the hotel defaulting on loans and workers going on strike after two months without pay.
Economic conditions within Bosnia remain dire: the state’s GDP per capita in 2016 was $11,000, compared with a $39,200 average in the European Union. Youth unemployment has risen to nearly 70 percent, which has resulted in crippling brain drain as young people look abroad for employment. For those who remain, a system of patronage and clientelism still dictates opportunities, and political party affiliation (most often a marker for ethnicity) is key.
The political landscape is often worse. While political parties like Naša Stranka (Our Party)—of which Tanović is a founding member—are working to re-center politics around issues, most parties are still formed along ethnic lines. Politicians continue to exploit ethnic narratives and identities in order to centralize their support and remain in power. And so, little has changed since the war ended in 1995.
This is the world to which the film transports us: a society obsessed with and overwhelmed by the past. But, by following three different story lines within the hotel, the audience is presented with three realities of the contemporary Bosnian experience.