by Dimitra Kouzi
“We Shall Live Together” was the campaign slogan of an opposition MP in the Bosnia and Herzegovina parliament who refused the nationalist logic of every side as the war began. It is also the title his son, Damir Markovina, gives to the film in which he asks his father, thirty years on, what that choice cost the family — and whether it was worth it. As the world marked the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreement, Damir Markovina's We Shall Live Together celebrates its world premiere in the Documentary Competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival 2026.
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This film is deeply personal because your father is both its subject and someone with whom you have had a complicated relationship. At what point did you realise that this needed to become a film rather than remain a private family conversation?
Tolstoy teaches us that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, while happy families are largely alike.
My experience is different.
Reflecting on how best to portray the war we lived through in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I realised that my family is by no means alone in a struggle to accept the new post-war society and its rules. After nearly fifty years of living together, many families in BiH found themselves excluded by the new nationalist divides and factions.
That fact—combined with my father’s unique position as a witness (an opposition MP in Bosnia and Herzegovina Parliament at the outbreak of the war)—enabled me to use my family and our history to tell a universal story about the onset of war and the choices it demands. It is certainly, uniquely, our story—a family story—yet one that, through recognisable archetypal family dynamics, I hope resonates with anyone who has gone through a similar experience.
Your father’s story challenges the dominant narratives about the Bosnian War by focusing on someone who rejected nationalism on all sides. What responsibilities did you feel towards the people, places and histories represented?
I think that responsibility boils down to two main issues: First, it is very easy to fall into the trap of oversimplifying the incredibly complex wartime situation in Mostar—and, more broadly, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this film, I wanted to preserve the full complexity of that narrative through facts backed by archival footage or personal testimony, while stripping away all speculation and personal opinions regarding the causes of the hostilities—of which I have a great deal in my source material. If it isn’t entirely clear why, at one moment, Bosniak and Croat forces were fighting side-by-side against Serb military and paramilitary units, only to become enemies in the next—or why my father’s loyalty was constantly being questioned due to his political views or his family members’ ethnicity—well, it wasn’t clear to us either amidst the chaos of that war. I want the traces of that chaos and uncertainty to be palpable in my film.
The second issue is as much a matter of dramaturgy as it is of family relationships: how do you make a film that doesn’t simply become a monument to a single moral choice or a paean to a moral man? I chose to re-examine my father’s convictions thirty years later and confront him with the price his deeply moral choice exacted from the rest of our family—a price we all paid. Whether that choice was right, necessary, or too costly is for the audience to judge.
I simply believe that every generation owes the next an answer to the question of why the world they left behind is the way it is, and whether—at some point or place—they could, or should have acted differently.
The film examines the personal consequences of resisting nationalism at a time when nationalist movements are once again reshaping politics around the world. What new insights did you gain about the relationship between moral conviction, personal sacrifice, and the relevance of these choices today?
I know for sure that nationalism is a key building block of fascism. I also know how terribly easy—and highly expedient—it is to join the herd mentality and regard the mere accident of birth into a particular family or nation as one’s supreme achievement. True understanding, innovation, or creativity require far greater effort—effort that most people are unwilling to make. Hiding behind a piece of colourful fabric representing some small, artificial political construct in power—what every nation basically is—offers a much faster route to success and recognition in a nationalist society.
This is true even though no one—especially in the historically complex Balkans—can truly vouch for the intimate erotic life of their own ancestors.
One must stand up to this fascism at all times, even through small, daily actions, even if your surroundings will not—that is what I learned from my father—especially if, in today’s Europe, such a struggle might be doomed to failure from the start, a prospect my father finds so difficult to accept.
My ideal remains a borderless Europe—a community of free spirits that transcends national and racial prejudices and divisions—equality, brotherhood and liberty.The title, We Shall Live Together, carries both hope and irony. What does that phrase mean to you today, more than thirty years after the war?
The hope, I suppose, that people will eventually realise that the neighbours with whom they share their lives are closer to them than some distant person with whom they share nothing but a label of national identity.
The—likely utopian—idea that it is indeed possible to overcome religious, racial, sexual or class divisions.
That sentence was the slogan of my father’s political campaign. They lost by a landslide, but the winning side did not create a better or happier society. Perhaps it is time to try an alternative.
Did you have a clear idea of what the film would look like before you began filming?
No. Never. And for someone like me—a rather obsessive-compulsive person—this represents huge progress, whether in preparation, the actual filming, or especially the editing. I do always keep in mind my conclusions about what the film is really about—and I have ideas that I want to try, but they don’t always work. I am constantly learning the value of adapting my preparation to each set and how to accept and manage the circumstances arising from situations I cannot fully control. I strive to choose the right collaborators who can help me understand the language of the footage we’ve shot and how to translate it into a film. It is a process that is incredibly slow and painful, yet deeply rewarding once we realise the direction we need to take. But for me, patience and persistence are the two main weapons. If you’re there often enough, long enough, and ready—the life you’re filming will offer you a lot to work with. Otherwise, I’ll constantly be trying to bend it to fit my narrative, which works only up to a point—you can nudge it, but if you insist it becomes something very fake and plastic at the speed of light. I don’t want to change the world; I want to ask a question about one specific part of it: what the hell is this? How did it happen?
Now, I think it’s better to let the filming process change me instead.
What kinds of risks did you have to take? In what ways was your comfort zone challenged?
I don’t think I ever stayed within my comfort zone while working on this film. On one hand, I was provoking my own family with memories of a barely suppressed past—the source of many of our conflicts—thereby risking my formative family relationships; on the other, I chose locations that would not invoke that past: Mostar, the Parliament of BiH, a cramped family lunch that devolves into an argument and a confrontation; a search for archival material testifying to a past that differs from the currently accepted canon, and so on.
Fortunately, I had wonderful partners—especially my producer Tamara Babun Zovko, editors Marta Bregeš and Vlado Gojun, and others—who stood in my corner and offered the right advice whenever I didn’t know exactly how to proceed.
Of course, there was always the risk that the role of the son would compromise the role of the director, but I had resolved that within myself before filming even began: I have a deeply personal reason for making this film, and that reason always comes first.
If I could continue my life without making it, I most certainly would do so.
What did your instincts help you do while you were shooting? Were there moments when your instincts as a son conflicted with your instincts as a director?
As for instinct, I’ll stay within the same set of Viktor Kossakovsky’s rules of filmmaking: “You need your brain both before and after filming, but don’t use your brain during filming. Film using your instinct and intuition.”
I find this simple rule true and irreplaceable.
Your background is primarily in acting. How did your experience of performance, emotion and human behaviour influence your directing?
For me, the greatest truth about acting, especially in theatre, lies in the fact that it exists only in the moment of performance.
In many decades as a professional actor, that always struck me as the hardest part: to be as present as possible in the moment itself—in that elusive “now” that you cannot even think about, because it has already passed the instant you do.
To me, this means not wasting time analysing what you have just done wrong or right, nor anticipating far into the future what might happen; it also means developing a real capacity to adapt to any change or stimulus and to respond quickly.
These principles resonate deeply with my own filmmaking process.
What did you learn from making this film, including about yourself?
I think I closed a very long circle of my life, and I’m happy for it.
As I’m still learning and polishing my filmmaking skills, this project gave me, through collaborations with a really fantastic crew of authors, a big new set of tricks that I’m really looking forward to developing in my future work.
Tell me about some “magical” moments.
Many, that’s the most beautiful and rewarding part of every project, so I don’t want to pull just one out, and I’m a bit superstitious—so let’s keep some mystery about those intact—but what I really think is that somehow you earn them by your continuing presence and effort.
What role do silence, gesture and observation play in the film’s understanding of your father?
In general, in an observational documentary, I think there is no alternative to patience. Every character, and my father is no exception, goes into a film about himself with a preset idea of who he is and how that whole film or a single scene should look.
My experience is that only with long shots, with extended recording time, and only after that initial barrage of words in a prepared monologue or statement does some interesting truth of that character slowly begin to emerge.
Of course, I also believe that I almost certainly only have one chance to shoot it, so yes—long shot and patience played a crucial role.
Why do you make documentaries?
I like the direct, immersive, hands-on experience of working on a documentary. I like even more that very intense, messy, cowboy guerrilla affair that always involves a very small group of people.
The reasons?
I was very young when something you could call “real life”, I guess, happened to me. I experienced a war, and as a direct result of it, poverty, a life without the support of a family, and a strong need to be self-sufficient and sustain myself. All of it in the brutal transitional society from the self-governing economy of Yugoslavia to the crony capitalism of the newly formed Croatia in the 1990s.
So, when I got the chance, I decided to turn my camera towards the things that trouble me. I have seen a whole range of consequences stemming from the events I witnessed in the 1990s that the region’s newly formed societies still stubbornly refuse to confront. I choose to approach these issues from my own perspective, as they are precisely what changed my life. Even when I am not able to define it fully, I am trying through editing and direction to elevate it to a higher level—where my personal stories transform from specific individual experience into the part of that timeless story which holds that, for victims, war and its consequences are always and everywhere the same.
I hope it shows everyone who shares a similar experience of pain, loss, and displacement that they are not alone. Perhaps it stems from a very deep urge for self-discovery or even from a selfish need to control my personal narrative.
Yet, I hope that my films do speak about who we are today, in this society—how we are alive and shaped by everything we have endured.
Do you have an obsession?
Many. I’m very much a perfectionist, easily drawn into obsessive-compulsive overthinking over every detail of the process. A control freak, sometimes. Maybe even a little bit of a dictator.
A good deal of my life goes into devising ways to trick that part of my personality.
Trust and camaraderie work best, so far.
In making this film, how did you navigate the needs of your inner child, your intellect and your spiritual self? Which of those voices guided you most?
I guess I had to silence all three of them. Where the child would cry and fight, and the intellect would demand reasonable answers, and where the spiritual self would whisper that it’s better to rise above the petty personal problems or quarrels and look into the future, the documentarian had to stay focused and wait for that unrepeatable shot and emotion it contains.
What makes you happy?
Picture lock, up to a point. Finishing the process, always. For a very short while, of course. Riding a bike on long routes. Every defeat of the fascists. Time spent with my partner. The sea, definitely.
Learning that my work matters to someone.
All the usual stuff.
What does success mean to you?
I had the good fortune—or perhaps the misfortune—of achieving considerable success in the region while still a relatively young performer.
Naturally, this came primarily through television and media, so I also learned, very quickly and painfully, about the flip side and the hollowness of such fame and success.
Today, to me, success means, above all, having a larger platform from which to communicate the motives and questions that drove me to undertake the project in the first place. Success also makes it easier to fund future projects, which is crucial for ideas I want to develop. And, of course, I am really happy when my colleagues and peers recognise my work as something worthy. Not for too long, though—just a little while.
As the film prepares to meet its first festival audiences, what conversations do you hope it will open—particularly among viewers with no direct connection to Bosnia and Herzegovina?
I hope the film sparks at least a small debate, or prompts reflection on alternatives to the status quo in BiH—and that it will show there were people, now largely forgotten, who desired a different, more just state and who have paid an extremely high price for their convictions.
I know a single film can change virtually nothing, but if it manages to at least put a pebble in the shoe of those in power about the possible prospects of the country I was raised in, I would consider my film to have fulfilled its purpose.
How would you like people to remember you?
I really don’t concern myself with that.
I believe my task is to leave a record of what it is like to be alive today—in this time and in this place.
I strive, to the best of my ability, to make films that accomplish that.
I can only hope that they shall stand the test of time and come to matter to someone.
Also, through that process, I’m trying to become an ever more kind and compassionate human being to my partner, colleagues, and surroundings.
I don’t care much about the rest; I know I won’t be around for anything else to matter to me.
We Shall Live Together — a film by Damir Markovina · Produced by Tamara Babun Zovko, Croatia / Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2026, 75 min
WORLD PREMIERE:
SUN 16/08/2026 15.30 (Cineplexx 1)
17/8, 10:00 Cineplexx 8
21/8 18:00 Cineplexx 3
