"Beautifully shot and utterly human."
FILM REVIEW

NO MAN'S LAND
Directed by Danis Tanovic
Screenplay Danis Tanovic
Oscar Winner: Best Foreign Language Film 2002

ABOUT THE FILM

Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1993. A Bosnian relief squad strays close to Serbian lines under fire at daybreak. Chiki (Branko Djuric, Gypsy Caravan, Ovo Malo Duse), seemingly the sole survivor, takes refuge in an abandoned trench. Two Serb soldiers are sent to check the trench, and lay a mine under Chiki's dead comrade, Cera. Chiki kills the older Serb and takes novice Nino (Rene Bitorajac, Garibaldi, Treca Sreca) prisoner. In fact, Cera is only unconscious, but cannot be moved. The men have to reach an uneasy truce, getting their respective armies to call in the neutral UN Protection Force. English UNPROFOR Colonel Soft (Simon Callow, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love), French sergeant Marchand (Georges Siatidis, Australia, Train de Vie) and TV news reporter Jane Livingstone (Katrin Cartlidge, Breaking the Waves, Naked) all get involved in the negotiations that will determine who leaves no man's land alive.

DIRECTOR'S NOTE BY DANIS TANOVIC

"I remember that strange feeling when war started in Bosnia, when I would see a black bullet hole in a building, or a crater made by a shell in a field. Imagine if someone imposed a black-and-white photograph on a Van Gogh painting, and you will partly understand what one feels when seeing this. This disharmony was a kind of a visual shock. It turned me cold and left me feeling bitter and helpless.
This shock is something I have produced through my film. On one side, a long summer day - perfect nature, strong colours - and on the other, human beings and their black madness. And this long hot summer day reflects the atmosphere of the film itself. Movements are heavy, thoughts are hard to grasp, time is slow and tension is hiding. It is hiding but present. When it finally explodes, it is like fireworks - sudden, loud and quick. Panoramic shots of landscape become unexpectedly mixed with nervous details of action. It all lasts for a moment or two and then tension hides away again, waiting for the next opportunity to surprise us. And time slows down again.
I wanted this film to be full of all different kinds of contrasts and disharmonies. But I wanted the outcome to be that disharmony and hate are unnatural, that they bring no solution.

I read somewhere that love brings harmony to a conflict without destroying either side. Hate does the contrary. If hate were the ruling principle, there would be no opposition left in the world. But because fire and water exist, love must be the principle that rules the world.
Characters in this story look quite alike. They are simple people, almost antiheroes, caught in the jaws of war. A man on one side of the front line could easily be found on the other. Only his name would be different.
I am not trying to deny responsibility for the atrocities committed in the Bosnian war. I would never do something like that because there were victims on one side and people who committed crimes on the other. But the point of my film is not to accuse; the story is not about pointing at those who did wrong. The point is to raise a voice against any kind of war. It is my vote against violence of any kind."

An appreciation of No Mans Land from Maggie O'Kane, the Guardian's front-line reporter during the Bosnian War
"The problem with most war films is that they are written by outsiders. Usually journalist-screenwriters only make it as far as the conflict city - or at least to the right war hotel in the right city: the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo; the Milles Collines in Rwanda; the Al Rashid in Baghdad.
But the reason why Danis Tanovic's film is different is because he lived his war. He spent two years in the trenches where his film is set…The result, No Man's Land, is without doubt the best film made so far about the Bosnian war. Tanovic was one of the Bosnian army's official cameramen and his film captures not only the fighting but also the other factors that compound the horror of those years. It explores the political spinning - the way the media was controlled to feed viewers with a distorted view of the conflict.
The film's wrath is reserved for the UN mandate in Bosnia - a myth that exploded when the 'safe haven' of Srebrenica fell, leading to the execution of almost 8.000 men and boys by the Bosnian Serb troops in three summer days in July 1995.
Tantovic's fury against the UN is unfurled in a portrayal of British political involvement during this period. During John Major's premiership and Douglas Hurd's tenure as foreign secretary, it was at its most cynical and machiavellian as they fought to oppose any outside intervention on the basis that each side was as bad as the other."

Maggie O'Kane, The Guardian, May 10th 2002

WEB LINKS

http://www.examiner.com/ex_files/
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0283509
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/NoMansLand

DIRECTORS INFORMATION

Writer/director Danis Tanovic, born in Bosnia-Herzegovina and former student at the Sarajevo Film Academy, has directed many highly acclaimed documentary films sponsored by various official bodies ranging from the Bosnian government to the European Humanitarian Office. Several of these films have depicted the effects of the Bosnian war on the people who lived through it or who were directly involved in the fighting. One such film is Portraits d'Artistes Pendant la Guerre (1994), which focused on four artists during the siege of Sarajevo.

Tanovic's outstanding work has been reflected in the awards he has accumulated over the years, notably for L'Aube (1996), which was awarded the Grand Prize from the Auxerre Film Festival, Best Film Documentary at the European Union's Echo Awards and first prize at the Fribourg Film Festival. His film Ca Ira (1998), about life in modern day Bosnia also received a major award from the Cinema Reel Festival in Paris. Besides working on his own films, Tanovic was responsible for the Bosnian army's film archive, for which he filmed over 300 hours of footage shot on the front-line of Sarajevo. This material has been used in news reports throughout the world. In between filmmaking projects, Tanovic has also directed commercials, including a Bosnian election campaign.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

Walther Vanden Ende's camerawork helps to effect the film's regular shifts between violence and humour, framing no man's land as an unexpectedly lovely patch of sunlit greenery. Undoubtedly Tanovic is serving us a metaphor of how multiethnic Bosnia was abandoned to its fate. It's a strong ending to a tightly constructed piece that nevertheless feels a bit too tidy. But the Cannes jury of 2001 certainly got the message, awarding Tanovic a Palme for best Screenplay."
Richard Kelly, SIGHT AND SOUND

"At times, in fact, it's all laid on a little too thickly, and the English actors certainly overplay their hands with theatrical turns that are out of sync with the movie's low-key naturalism. But for all that, this is a bleakly amusing, deeply ironic allegory that's been compared to Catch-22 and M*A*S*H. It sure as hell beats Hollywood's recent look at the same war, Behind Enemy Lines."
Neil Smith, TOTAL FILM

"Actually filmed in Slovenia, it portrays a battlefield in the former Yugoslavia as a green and pleasant land of rolling hills and sun-dappled trees. It's not the muddy, cratered barbed-wire hell that most war films favour, so when a tank trundles into view or a rifle cracks, the incongruity is so absurd it's almost Pythonesque. How, you wonder, could violence sneak into this pastoral paradise?…
It's not quite the shattering tour de force that might be promised by all those awards, being more of a small-scale, satirical black comedy. But it's heartfelt and astute, as illustrated by the relationship of the trapped soldiers."
Nicholas Barber, The Independent

"With its cool precision, subject and generally sceptical tone, the film brings to mind mid-period Kubrick - not bad for starters."
Geoff Andrew, TIME OUT

CAST LIST

Notes Compiled by:
	Tyneside Cinema 10 Pilgrim Street Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG Tel: (0191) 232 8289 - 10am - 8pm (Box Office and Administration) (voice plus minicom 5), (0191) 232 1507 (recorded information line). Tyneside Cinema website address: http://www.tynecine.org

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