Oscars Fever: Quo Vadis, Aida?
Fingers crossed for Bosnian-Dutch co-production Quo Vadis, Aida?. Coming Sunday we will know if the film will be awarded with the Oscar for Best International Feature. The film is co-produced by N279 Entertainment and Dutch actors Raymond Thiry, Reinout Bussemaker and Juda Goslinga play important roles.
Quo Vadis, Aida? world premiered in Venice Competition and was selected for Toronto. It has been awarded among others the Audience Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Best International Film at Gothenburg, the Knight Marimbas and Rene Rodriguez Critics Award at Miami.
In September 2020, during the Venice International Film Festival, SEE NL spoke to Els Vandevorst of N279 Entertainment.
The film, directed by Bosnian Jasmila Žbanić, deals with the massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys by Serbian forces at Srebrenica in 1995. It is a harrowing episode for which the Netherlands government was found partly responsible after Dutch UN forces evacuated the safe compound instead of protecting it. The guilty ruling was upheld by the Dutch Supreme Court.
This was a core reason that there should be significant Dutch involvement within what became a nine-country co-production, underlines Els Vandevorst of N279 Entertainment.
In the film, Aida is a translator for the UN in Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people-rescue or death? And which move should she make?
Vandevorst was very impressed by director Žbanić. "The way she researched this film, how she was restructuring in fiction the whole situation that was happening there on this specific day that the Muslim men are taken out of the compound and killed is so perfectly done. It is very gripping and emotional."
But the film needed a higher budget, certainly more than for Žbanić's previous works, Vandevorst maintains, and therefore supported producer Damir Ibrahimović in financing restructure the production. "In the end it was one of the greatest and most challenging involvements I ever had with so many collaborating countries." Dutch elements include the provision of ten actors to play UN soldiers at the compound, a casting director, costume (shared with Poland), the entire sound department and visual effects in post. Quo Vadis, Aida? received Netherlands Film Fund Minority co-production support and was supported by Netherlands Film Production Incentive.