Death in Sarajevo | Video Highlights Press Conference | Berlinale 2016

Highlights Press Conference of SMRT U SARAJEVU / MORT À SARAJEVO (DEATH IN SARAJEVO) by Danis Tanović at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. 

Sarajevo on 28 of June, 2014. At the Hotel Europa, the best hotel in town, the manager Omer prepares to welcome a delegation of diplomatic VIPs. On the centenary of the assassination that is considered to have led to World War I, an appeal for peace and understanding is supposed to start from here. But the hotel staff have other worries: having not been paid for months, they are planning to go on strike. Hatidza from the hotel laundry is elected strike leader even though her daughter Lamija, who works in reception, is firmly against industrial action. Meanwhile, in the sealed-off presidential suite, a guest from France rehearses a speech. Elsewhere, a television reporter conducts interviews about war and its consequences. Was Gavrilo Princip, the 1914 assassin, a criminal or a national hero? What long shadow does his deed cast into the present?

Danis Tanović, whose An Episode in the Life of an Iron Pickerscreened in Competition at the Berlinale in 2013, offers a satirical parable about political dreams and nightmares. His Hotel Europa, which he portrays from its cellar passageways right up to its sunlit roof terrace, becomes an arena of hope, violence and death.

France / Bosnia and Herzegovina 2016, 85 min

Bosnian

by

Danis Tanović

with

Jacques Weber

Snežana Vidović

Izudin Bajrović

Vedrana Seksan

Muhamed Hadžović

Danis Tanović (Director, Scriptwriter) 

Bernard-Henri Lévy (Writer of Hotel EUROPE)

Izudin Bajrović (Actor)

Vedrana Seksan (Actress)

Snežana Vidović (Actress)

Jacques Weber (Actor) 

Amra Bakšić Čamo (Producer) 

François Margolin (Producer)