Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020)

This is one of five finalist for Best International Film at this year's Academy Awards. As is typical of this category, it shines a light on events that there would be little disagreement about what should have happened, but the right thing did not happen. In this story, they did not happen even once. It is an incrimination of failed foreign policies from around the world embedded in a deeply humanist and moving character study of the kind of person that these policies leave behind. The story is about Aida (Jasna Djuricic), who was a translator for the UN in the town of Srebenica in Bosnia in 1995 in this true story. At that time, a war between the Serbians and Bosnians had led to incredible bloodshed but the Serbians were at a point wherein they overtook Srebenica. She is translating for the UN team, but she is also deeply worried about the fate of her husband and her two sons. The movie is chaotic and slow at the same time, rolling slowly toward a trajedy we already know happened, with the UN emmascualted and flat footed. This is a very specific story of war crimes in 1995, but it feels also like a modern commentary on how often foreign policy and U.N. intervention fails to see the human lives caught up in their decision making, and so often in their inability to make those tough decisions quickly and empathetically. Taut and intense, this is the kind of film that you think about for days and hopefully starts conversations about what should have happened.