Language: German and Serbo-Croatian

Sarajevo, 2005, the war has been over for years, but it still holds 30-year-old Senada hostage. Her daughter, Aida, has been ‘missing’ for nine years, but Senada has not yet forsaken the hope that she is alive. She clings in despair to a vague sign, in spite of the fact that her ex-husband and her friends encourage her to finally let go and try to build a new life. When she finds evidence that the Red Cross flew children to Germany during the war, she follows the trail immediately and arrives after a long journey in Ulm. She is rewarded there for her stubborn determination: Aida had actually been brought to Germany, where the then two-year-old girl was given up for adoption. The life of the German family, Heinle, and their 12-year-old daugher, Kristina, is suddenly shaken by its roots when they learn that the mother they thoguht was dead is indeed alive and wants her daughter back. The Heinles are confused. They love their daughter more than anything and cannot conceive of losing her. Senada is reunited with her daughter, who is happy, firmly rooted in her new life, and no longer even able to speak the native language of her natural mother. Senada is confronted with a difficult decision: should she insist on the return of her daughter, wrenching her from her social circumstances and life in Germany, or return alone to Bosnia with the knowledge that her daugher is alive and doing well? (text from Progamme of the 9th Festival of German Films in London, 2006).

Senada realises in the end that it is impossible for her to take Aida back. Having entered Germany as an illegal immgrant without a passport as well as the fact that her ex-husband signed a document during the war in which he gave permission for Aida to be taken to Germany (and which made the adotption legal), her legal position would be weak. Moreover, Aida (whose name is Kristina now) is firmly rooted in Germany and has no obvious bond with her natural mother or her Bosnian roots. In the end Senada and her ex-husband, who joined Senada in Germany, return without their child.

Follwing the screeing at the 9th German Film Festival in London, director Christian Wagner commented on the themes of this film, his second in a series of films entitled ‘Balkan Blues Trilogy’. One of the issues he wanted to address is the hidden trauma which those people who survived the war on the Balkans carry around with them. Senada, a beautiful young woman, is clearly traumatised by the memory of the war, her experience of internment, of having been raped and of having been separated from her child.

Themes: trauma of Balkan war; illegal immigration; border crossings; return to Heimat