30/04/2008

The first feature film of young Bosnian writer-director Aida Begic, Snow [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], is produced and co-written by Elma Tataragic, best known as the selector of Sarajevo Film Festival, of Bosnia and Herzegovina's production company Mamafilm.

Other partners are France's Les Films De l’A pres-Midi (behind Manoel de Oliveira's Christopher Columbus: The Enigma [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Germany's Rohfilm; co-producers are Iran's DEFC and Bosnian Federal Television.

The film is set in an Eastern Bosnian village in 1997, a year after the end of war. Only six women, one old man and five kids of the town’s 100 inhabitants survived the horrors of war in which their husbands, fathers and children died. With the first snow, the village will become completely isolated and the villagers' lives endangered.

An unexpected visit from two businessmen asking them to leave their homes in exchange for money poses a moral dilemma. But a surprise snowstorm traps the two in the village and they are forced to face what they least expected – the truth.

"Peace time is sometimes more complicated than the war. Materialism take its role very quickly and all the essential things you've learned during the war you start to forget," says Begovic. "Snow is about a small and isolated group of people who find the strength to resist and to dream their own dreams, even if sometimes they are nightmares."

The film was shot in 29 days in September and October 2007 in the village Zigovi near the town of Gorazde. "It's interesting because the inhabitants of Zigovi had the same life story as the characters in our film," says Tataragic.

Zana Marjanovic, Jasna Ornela Bery and Emir Hadzihafizbegovic star.