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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?<\/strong> Your father\u2019s 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?<\/strong>
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\u2014combined with my father\u2019s unique position as a witness (an opposition MP in Bosnia and Herzegovina Parliament at the outbreak of the war)\u2014enabled 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\u2014a family story\u2014yet one that, through recognisable archetypal family dynamics, I hope resonates with anyone who has gone through a similar experience.
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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\u2014and, 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\u2014of which I have a great deal in my source material. If it isn\u2019t 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\u2014or why my father\u2019s loyalty was constantly being questioned due to his political views or his family members\u2019 ethnicity\u2014well, it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t simply become a monument to a single moral choice or a paean to a moral man? I chose to re-examine my father\u2019s convictions thirty years later and confront him with the price his deeply moral choice exacted from the rest of our family\u2014a 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\u2014at some point or place\u2014they 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\u2014and highly expedient\u2014it is to join the herd mentality and regard the mere accident of birth into a particular family or nation as one\u2019s supreme achievement. True understanding, innovation, or creativity require far greater effort\u2014effort that most people are unwilling to make. Hiding behind a piece of colourful fabric representing some small, artificial political construct in power\u2014what every nation basically is\u2014offers a much faster route to success and recognition in a nationalist society.
This is true even though no one\u2014especially in the historically complex Balkans\u2014can 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\u2014that is what I learned from my father\u2014especially if, in today\u2019s 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\u2014a community of free spirits that transcends national and racial prejudices and divisions\u2014equality, 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?
<\/strong>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\u2014likely utopian\u2014idea that it is indeed possible to overcome religious, racial, sexual or class divisions.
That sentence was the slogan of my father\u2019s 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?<\/strong>
No. Never. And for someone like me\u2014a rather obsessive-compulsive person\u2014this 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\u2014and I have ideas that I want to try, but they don\u2019t 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\u2019ve 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\u2019re there often enough, long enough, and ready\u2014the life you\u2019re filming will offer you a lot to work with. Otherwise, I\u2019ll constantly be trying to bend it to fit my narrative, which works only up to a point\u2014you can nudge it, but if you insist it becomes something very fake and plastic at the speed of light. I don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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?<\/strong>
I don\u2019t 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\u2014the source of many of our conflicts\u2014thereby 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\u2014especially my producer Tamara Babun Zovko<\/a><\/strong>, editors Marta Brege\u0161 and Vlado Gojun, and others\u2014who stood in my corner and offered the right advice whenever I didn\u2019t 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.
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