Reviews

‘…this film came out of the need of young artists to leave behind a document about the time that affected them.By intuition and modest means, they have succeeded in making a documentary that generations to follow will watch as one of the best “unofficial documents” about the siege of Sarajevo.’
DANIS TANOVIC, film director of No Man’s Land

“I don’t like Tanovic s No Man’s Land, but Do you remember Sarajevo is good film!”
ZAN LIK GODAR (interview Oslobodjenje, march 2003.)

‘Un documento che merita di essere ospite di festival a di essere visto per mostrare come senza retorica ma con l’incredibile normalita dell’impossibile, le cittadine ed i cittadini hanno superato quegli e questi anni. Un altro pezzo di quella terra di nessuno che pero tutte-i avrebbero voluto.’
Valentina Pellizer (Osservatorio sui Balcani)

'...These guys made a documentary film about everything that happened to the citizens of Sarajevo …Their friends and themselves filmed with video cameras daily pictures of terror on their streets, that always had a balance of infinite human need to remain alive against all odds, to seek relief at the non-specific spiritual side...'
LJILJAN, March 25, 2002.

'...The amount of authenticity in this film is reaffirmed by the confused state of one citizen of Sarajevo who at the beginning of the war in disbelief notices that residential buildings are being shelled. This documentary is a significant testimony for the generations to come...'
OSLOBODJENJE, February 15, 2002.

'The best documentary film in the region. It's the most significant film in the region...Authors managed to avoid telling their own intimate experiences of war, thus documenting all those emotions felt by majority of citizens who lived in a besieged city over a thousand days...'
Nidzara Ahmetasevic, SLOBODNA BOSNA, February 28, 2002.

'...This film is an authentic testimony of events in war-time Sarajevo...'
DNEVNI AVAZ, March 9, 2002.

'...We don't want to tell you all about the film, but we want to recommend that you should definitely not miss seeing this event in the wide program of Sarajevo Winter Festival.'
JUTARNJE NOVINE , February 8, 2002.

'...This is the first film about Sarajevo under siege that successfully documented our state of consciousness through time. The shock at the beginning of the siege, learning how to survive, the resistance, the ascent and decent of the spirit throughout the four long years of suffering...'
'It's a film of passionate filmmakers. Authors are Muslim and they clearly express so in this film. The main quality of this film is that every citizen of Sarajevo can identify him/herself with the film – those who are not young, those who are not filmmakers and those who are not Muslim. That's why this film is an art form...'
'... Authors of the film have invited our common memory that has essentially determined our lives...'
'...Brothers Kresevljakovic and Alikadic are authors who belong to the avangard of Bosnian film. We can recognize the artistic avangard of Russia in this film and Dziga Vertov's exclamation 'I am a man-camera'. Bunuel’s and Dali's Andalusian dog and surrealism, Vigo 's 'Apropos de Nice', the American avangard of the fifties and Monty Payton are all historic methods used in 'Do You Remember Sarajevo'.
Kresevljakovics and Alikadic are predecessors in camera treatment to Von Trier and 'NYPD'. Their formal and esthetic innovation consists in their ability to unify their own documentary material, archive, video-letters (specific during the siege of Sarajevo) and feature material. In this way they produced a document of inestimable value and an excellent artistic film. This film is the brilliant mind of Sarajevans under siege.'
Haris PASOVIC, OSLOBODJENJE, March 27, 2002.

'On Thursday evening, thanks to Kresevljakovics and Alikadic, Sarajevans recalled what they have lived through during the siege of the city...'
OSLOBODJENJE, March 23, 2002.

' That's it. The camera could've been in either your right or your left hand.'
Haris SILAJDZIC

'This is made for a museum of contemporary arts'
SPELA, Slovenia

'A film that is a hit.'
Dino Bajramovic, SLOBODNA BOSNA, March 28, 2002.

“This film is one of the most important historical documents of the last decade’
Tue Steen Muller, DOX Magazine

As it is already known, in 1992 begins the great aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina, and this state, especially its capital Sarajevo, suffers through huge destruction and civilian massacres. That’s when teenagers Nihad and Sead Kresevljakovic and Nedim Alikadic take their VHS cameras and start to document in detail everything that is happening to the city, their families and friends. At the end of the war, collecting some additional footage, they gather approximately 500 hours of various stories, events, confessions. Five years after, they decide to edit it into something they can show their guests who ask “What happened in Sarajevo?”
Film “Mahmuts on the island”, just like its title, is not translatable to any language (not even to Bosnian) except to the film language in which it is made and which is understood and felt by many people World wide. It is for them, for all those anonymous consumers of TV news and disturbing documentaries, that this film is intended for. There isn’t any shocking naturalism or overdone stylization that would serve as a substitute for their own physical or emotional experience of Sarajevo, as for right interests. Here it is determined by the artistic need, not the need of the artist. This film is intended for all the people who due to all political interpretations don’t have any space left in their head for their personal experience of the event. For those who don’t see people in this city past their national origin or religion or political options. And they really live and lived during the war. It is about them - few stories composed out of few hundred hours of materials filmed in various formats, collected and filmed by Kresevljakovics’ and Alikadic. Never before were published and edited materials revealing the intimate side of Sarajevo citizens in their most difficult historic period.
By very careful editing, they succeed in giving the material a flow of a film and eliminate a strong feel of the home video. Beside hard work , they succeed by being completely honest towards themselves and to what they are, honest towards the war, towards their city. Working completely in private and in financial independence, they didn’t have the need to involve themselves with the convenience of forgetting the facts about aggression and the executors of the aggression. They place the aggressors and their ideas at the beginning and that’s how, with a few scenes, they establish time and space and all the monstrosity of those that one civilized nation had to oppose.
After that, after the MGM logo, aggressors don’t interest them/us anymore, since it’s clear that ‘they’ (the aggressors) could only kill us and ‘they’ did that systemically, but ‘they’ couldn’t meddle with our lives and ‘they’ couldn’t change us. Why ‘they’ couldn’t do it is a question answered in this film.
This is a film about a life forced onto a small space and made temporary by the war, and these footages of home video, of the city and its people all of a sudden become a paradigm. But Kreševljakovic brothers and Nedim Alikadic are not the ones who concern themselves with paradigms, but with ordinary people and their occupations and creations. So we see the wounded who carries the bullet that shot him, then two short surreal films from ‘Save the Amazon’ production, followed by no less surreal wedding in destroyed surrounding.
They protect what they are with honesty, which is not simple nor without consequences. Film is noble, funny and generous towards the enemy. But as every truth, truth felt in every frame, it will probably provoke the same hatred that drove ‘them’ to attack us. Because the war continues; the war between the beautiful and the ugly, between the civilized and the barbaric, between the talented and the empty, between the creative and the destructive. That’s why everything at the end remains ‘unforgiven’, because those who survived can not forgive. Only the fifteen thousand of those who didn’t (survive) can forgive. This film is perhaps the closest to their voice. What you need to do to hear that voice is to see this film.
Faruk Loncarevic (selector of Regional program – Sarajevo Film Festival )

It is not a great piece of cinematography. Actually it is pretty bad in that respect. Many frames are out of focus, the camera movements are abrupt and often shaky, the sound is imperfect. In other words, the technical quality cannot even be characterized as semi-professional!
And yet this film is one of the most important historical documents of the last decade. It is a compilation of amateur footage shot by Sarajevo citizens during a war that took place not so long ago. Close to us in Europe lies Sarajevo, a magical name, once a beautiful city with beautiful buildings, then victimized by terrorist attacks and now a tragic symbol. Deserted towers still stand with gaping holes where once there were windows. Many were snipers' nests. Is it all forgotten? Do you remember Sarajevo ... where the Yugoslav National Army was killing the citizens of a city that was not allowed to defend itself by the international community?
"Golden days for filmmaking," a Bosnian producer once said to me in a tone full of sarcasm. He reported that they were filming every single day, and not only the film professionals were doing so. Citizens from many walks of life grabbed their hobby cameras to register the events. This is what makes up this documentary, structurally loose but communicating an enormous atmosphere of presence and authenticity that no journalistic documentary will ever be able to capture. Or to use an advertising phrase, it's the real thing. Shots of everyday activities during the siege from 1992 to 1995, flashes in the sky from constant firing from the surrounding mountain slopes, people crossing the street in fear that the next minute could be their last if hit by a sniper's bullet.
Though it sounds like a sad film that is difficult to watch, it is not at all, owing to the loose structure chosen by the young directors, which includes amateur footage in an unpretentious, uncommented, direct way. Not only that, the directors themselves pop up in the film once in a while doing gags in and outside their house. Black humour you might call it, but it reflects the feeling of survival as it must have been during the siege. Life went on under these crazy conditions where organisers even managed to hold a film festival.
In answer to the film title's question, yes, I do. I remember Sarajevo.
Tue Steen Müller, DOX magazine

'...This is the first film about Sarajevo under siege that successfully documented our state of consciousness through time. The shock at the beginning of the siege, learning how to survive, the resistance, the ascent and decent of the spirit throughout the four long years of suffering...'
'It's a film of passionate filmmakers. Authors are Muslim and they clearly express so in this film. The main quality of this film is that every citizen of Sarajevo can identify him/herself with the film – those who are not young, those who are not filmmakers and those who are not Muslim. That's why this film is an art form...'
'... Authors of the film have invited our common memory that has essentially determined our lives...'
'...Brothers Kresevljakovic and Alikadic are authors who belong to the avangard of Bosnian film. We can recognize the artistic avangard of Russia in this film and Dziga Vertov's exclamation 'I am a man-camera'. Buñuel’s and Dali's Andalusian dog and surrealism, Vigo 's 'Apropos de Nice', the American avangard of the fifties and Monty Payton are all historic methods used in 'Do You Remember Sarajevo'.
Kresevljakovics and Alikadic are predecessors in camera treatment to Von Trier and 'NYPD'. Their formal and esthetic innovation consists in their ability to unify their own documentary material, archive, video-letters (specific during the siege of Sarajevo) and feature material. In this way they produced a document of inestimable value and an excellent artistic film. This film is the brilliant mind of Sarajevans under siege.'
Haris PASOVIC, PERFECT MEMORY OF THE CITY, OSLOBODJENJE, March 27, 2002.