Announcing the next London Screening for Uspomene 677. This time at FRONTLINE CLUB. If you haven’t seen it yet come and join us at the home of war journalism in London. For more information click here. Hope to see you there!

With the website garnering this initial attention, we then intend to run workshops across the entirety of Bosnia. The young men and women featured in USPOMENE677 will act as our “on-the-field” ambassadors, explaining their experiences from being involved in the film.

The attendees will be offered Pro-Consumer cameras and basic training in filmmaking, encouraging them to make their own interpretations of the headings ‘Identity’ and ‘The Future of Bosnia’. Completed films will be uploaded to the above website, showing by whom and where within Bosnia they were made. This will be an incredibly effective vehicle for showcasing, creatively, how young people across the stretch of the land feel about the aforementioned subjects (think a more localized version of ‘Life in a Day’).

Along with this hands-on approach, several screenings of USPOMENE677 will be orchestrated in various parts of Bosnia, followed by filmed audience discussions on its general outcome and implications for the future. Some may then be uploaded to the film’s main website for the purpose of research material.

Based on both the website and the workshops/screenings, we intend to make a follow-up documentary to USPOMENE677: a project that will revisit the subject material several years on.

The journey that was USPOMENE677 has left us with countless material not seen in the film. This includes thousands of photographs, documents, posters and articles collated over years of pre-production and during the filming process.

We strongly believe this goldmine of information would be of huge interest to natives of Bosnia and beyond. To this end, we plan to showcase this material within venues across the country (in conjunction with the above screenings). Not only would this offer a great introduction to the subject material, more importantly it would bring together the Bosnian public and instigate discussion and an outlook for the future.

After seeing the effects of USPOMENE677 thus far on its audiences, we feel a multi-translated book based on the film can further extrapolate on its subject, whilst vastly increasing accessibility on a global scale.

The book would focus on the making of the documentary i.e. its life as project, the impact it has had within Bosnia and its ever-growing online legacy. Its main goal is to show an audience from around the world how a project of passion turned into something that had incredible implications for its homeland and abroad. With this in mind, we hope it can show the public how filmmaking as a craft can potentially change the world, and that it begins with heart and determination.

Mirko Pincelli is a photojournalist and filmmaker. He has developed a deeply personal style, exploring reportage photography and character-led documentaries. He graduated with a BA Honours in Photography from the University of East London at the department of Architecture and Visual Arts.

He worked four years in advertising and fashion photography before setting up his own company Pinch Media. In the last few years, Mirko has been able to focus on character-driven documentaries and short dramas as well as several assignments as a photojournalist in former war zones, including Bosnia. Most recently, he filmed a series of short documentaries with the Independent Production Company for Holocaust Memorial Day as well as shooting an interview conducted by the Guardian with two heroes of the Rwandan genocide who saved hundreds of lives at a Kigali orphanage during the slaughter in 1994.

Uspomene 677, based on an early photojournalism assignment, his first feature documentary, has been selected for raindance film festival where it was nominated for an award as ‘best low budget feature’. The Documentary has been subsequently screened at several universities in London and at one of the most prestigious photojournalism galleries in London. Finally the film is on its way to several international film festivals. Mirko is currently working on his second feature documentary on a special school to cure stammer in Italy. ‘The habit of beauty’ is his first narrative feature film.

Enrico Tessarin is a graduate of the London Film School with ten years of experience working on documentaries, music videos, commercials and short films.

In 2006, Tessarin was selected for training by European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) and in 2007 he worked as one of six producers from Film London, on “Passport”. Additionally, he was one of the fifteen up-and-coming UK producers selected for the first London Production Finance Market. Since early 2007, he has worked on “Sofia?s Diary,” the first interactive web-series for Sony Television Europe, which successfully transferred to television on the new digital channel Fiver, from Channel Five. He just completed his first feature film ‘The Knot’ and is in development with two more features, one of which is with Vertigo Films. Enrico in 2010 was selected for mentoring scheme ‘Guiding Lights’ run by UKFC and Skillset (one of only 5 producers selected) and spent a year being mentored by Allan Niblo, co-founder of Vertigo Films (Streetdance 3D, Monsters, and Oscar Winning documentary The Cove).

Velma Šaric, Founder and Executive Director of the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) has extensive journalism experience and has been reporting for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) and Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) on war crimes trials from the Hague tribunal and the Bosnia-Herzegovina War Crimes Court.

From May 2004 to May 2008 she worked as an Expert Associate at the University of Sarajevo, where she was trained in genocide, international law and war crimes. Šaric has managed, coordinated, and organized numerous educational programs and conferences with focuses ranging from genocide, to international law, to peacebuilding and reconciliation. She has worked with several universities including Yale, Georgetown, the University of Denver, and George Mason University and is responsible for organizing and coordinating a conference that featured experts, war and concentration camp survivors, war reporters and journalists, and political figures who examined the issues surrounding genocide, concentration camp detainment, peace building and reconciliation.

Jason Brooks first studied photography at Princeton University, subsequently expanding his repertoire to encompass the moving image with an MA in Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths College. He is now a London-based freelance editor, cameraman, and director. He works in one or more of these capacities on a wide variety of projects from theatrical and televised documentaries to music videos and corporate commissions.

He is driven by a desire to explore and communicate the infinite diversity of human stories being lived around the world, and find himself most inspired by the work of directors such as Johan Van Der Keuken and Chris Marker.

Noel Clarke is a BAFTA winning actor, director and producer, mostly known for his films Kidulthood and Adulthood but also for his starring roles as an actor in Doctor Who and Auf Wiedersen pet. Uspomene 677 is the first documentary he is getting involved with.

Co-Founder and Project Director of PCRC, Leslie Woodward, holds a BA in Biology from Baylor University and an MA in International Studies, with a focus in strategic peacebuilding, research in developing contexts, and post-conflict development from the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

She has worked as a research manager for the Leadership Institute for New Sudan (LIONS) and as a researcher for the Center for Sustainable Development and International Peace (SDIP) on the development of peacebuilding and statebuilding strategies for Somalia.

She graduated in 2006 from the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Sarajevo. Her graduation piece was entitled “The Srebrenica Golgota” and it thematized the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995 and has received the best notes from the artistic commission of the Academy.

Dolores had worked on various projects as an expert consultant on artistic photography and video editing. One of her most important photographic consultancy works includes the selection of photography for the International Conference on the Srebrenica Genocide organized by the University of Sarajevo in July of 2005.

He has used the media to help change Government policy and even (on one occasion) to avert a massacre.

The Independent Production Company – which he set up last year in collaboration with Dr James Smith, CEO Aegis Trust, and award-winning documentary producer Julian Phelan – is a social enterprise helping to monetise incredible IP to support the charity’s work, whilst applying a firmly commercial approach to all projects and their production values. The IPC earlier this year produced a series of short documentaries for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and has a number of exciting projects in development.

He has produced and filmed in Africa, America, Europe, Russia, Tibet and the Caucasus and continues to produce the world?s leading ethnographic films.

He co-founded the Aegis Trust in 2000, and with the UK Foreign Office in 2002 staged the first major international conference on genocide prevention. In 2004 he established the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda’s capital, at a site where 250,000 victims of the 1994 genocide lie buried. It receives tens of thousands of visitors each year, world leaders among them. James visited Darfur in 2004 and was the first NGO head to call for its referral to the International Criminal Court. He is an author, editor and contributor to multiple films and publications on the Holocaust and genocide.

USPOMENE 677 will show you the viewpoint of each ethnic group through a new generation, the sons and daughters of that war, who are struggling to come to terms with their toxic past.

USPOMENE 677 is a story of our time. But the time to tell this story is short. Today, in a Bosnia fighting for EU membership yet threatened by possible return to war, the new generations, often in contrast with their parents, are desperate to find a way to live together for a different, peaceful tomorrow.

The film shows the stories of Kemal, Tatjana and Luka (Bosnian teens), Sadzida, Nadeljko and Zeljko (camp survivors). It shows how each character is trying to build a life in contemporary BiH after escaping the brutalities of war. With realities that exist somewhere between the past and present, the lives they live too often betray a tragic story of recent conflict and devastating loss. Football fields have become places where clashes between players are more about politics than good old-fashioned fun and classrooms have become places where friends are separated because of ethnicities they would otherwise be unaware of.

The story is told in three parts. Present, past and Future. In ‘Present’ we see the story of the three teenagers, one after another.

We start in Sarajevo where a vibrant pop and art scene once thrived, and, so too, a shining example of multi-ethnicity. The Siege of Sarajevo from 1992 – ’96 was the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 people, mainly Bošniak Muslims, were killed or went missing. The siege affected all sectors of Sarajevo’s population. UNICEF reported that it is probable the psychological trauma suffered during the siege will bear heavily on the lives of the estimated 65,000 to 80,000 children in the city for years to come. With this background in mind, we meet Kemal, a young Muslim boy whose mother died in the middle of the ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Serb Army. Kemal’s mother was killed by a rocket fired by a Serb soldier and Kemal, then a four-month-old baby, lost a leg. In the following 16 years Kemal had to have 13 operations – and just a few weeks ago he had to face the arrest of commander Ratko Mladic. Mladic was one of the most prominent generals and a suspected war criminals. Yet as we find out, 10,000 people protested against Mladic’s arrest and hailed him as a hero and mighty Bosnian general.

The story of USPOMENE 677 continues in Republika Srpska (RS), an area that, since the war, has become part of the Serbian territory of Bosnia. As we enter the town of Vlasenica, we see charred, damaged and empty houses lining the streets and nationalistic flags waving in the wind. And this is when we meet our first teenager, Tatjana, Serb yet keen on multiethnic Bosnia that defies the older generation.

The daughter of a chaotic family with a drug addict father, Tatjana managed to pull through and actually find the energy to help others, by working as a youth worker. Just as Tatjana gives us a bit of hope, we begin our search for the Sušica concentration camp, but no local can identify its location. Between late May and October of 1992, as many as 8,000 Muslim and non-Serb civilians were detained, and approximately 3,000 Muslims were executed at this site, but the locals do not wish to reveal the former camp’s location, or they deny that the camp ever existed.

Finally we meet Luka, a deep thinking Croat boy who lost his mum a few years back and doesn’t really want to talk about war. Luka seeks reunification in Bosnia, via his effort as part of his multi-ethnic handball team, a metaphor for a Bosnia that can be united. Fighting between the three main ethnic groups, especially between Croats and Muslims, divided a city that was once at peace.

After hearing about the present its conflicts and its hopes, we go back to the past. To three survivors of concentration camps, one for each ethnicity, telling us their story how it is. They are mostly stories of pain and regrets that leave very little room for a positive future.

It is in Bugojno that we also follow Zeljko, an ex-soldier in the Croatian army who was detained in what is considered one of the most brutal detention centers for Croats. Today, he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and is unable to believe that any chance of a normal future is possible for him as he feels isolated and traumatized.

We then meet Sadzida, a Muslim woman who never returned to her home in Vlasenica. Sadzida was not only detained at Sušica, but kept for long periods of time in private “rape houses” where she was systematically raped, tortured and beaten. She was forced to marry a Serbian soldier, deported to Serbia, and required to have multiple abortions. Despite all of these hardships, Sadzida remains optimistic, a glimmer of hope appearing in her smile. She tells us, “I am just happy I survived.” Unfortunately, Sadzida has to use prescription drugs to cope with the atrocities she has faced and must attend weekly meetings with a local psychologist. Her words move us, clearly depicting her fear to speak out, but she still tells us that she sees this project as a unique chance to finally tell her story and find some closure and peace.

These events are staggering and yet, as our other Serbian character Nadeljko reminds us, nobody ever speaks about the crimes committed against the Serb population. Nadeljko, is a Serb who was detained for 1,312 days in the war prison “Silos”, near Sarajevo, from his perspective a Muslim-run camp. Nadeljko is fighting to ensure that the story of the prisoners of Silos is not forgotten in the sea of statistics identifying crimes committed by Serbs. He insists that there were many Serb victims; from May 1992 to January 1996, hundreds of Serb men and women from the area of Hadzici were held prisoner in humane conditions. We travel on to Bugojno, a city that, during the former Yugoslav era, represented prosperity and industry, and was kept united in the name of “brotherhood”. Here, war left complete destruction, division and poverty in its wake.

After establishing a deep and trusting relationship with these teens and survivors, our crew observed, and aimed to understand, how each of their lives have been directed and influenced by the realities of the war that directly affected their families and older friends. Each of our teens has high hopes for a normal life, free of conflict, with their neighbours and elders. In a fast moving ending In the ‘future’ we analyse the reflections on their future of both teenagers and adults, in a summary that leaves very little hope.

Yet, in an almost surreal ending we managed to convince at least two teenagers from each ethnicity to spend a weekend together in a mountain chalet. Some of them had never spoken to a person of the other ethnicity in their all life. There were all the ingredients for this weekend to blow up in our face. And yet these young boys and girls manage to just be teenagers, as they would in every other country. They drunk, they chatted, they flirted, they laughed. This apparently insignificant event is very meaningful in Bosnia. And give a bit of hope to a land that really, really need. Maybe it has a future after all.

However, after a few short projects together, The Independent Production Company decided to financially back the project and in January 2011 Mirko took his first official filming trip to Bosnia. In April after editing the first meaningful new trailer, we showed it to BAFTA-winning Actor/Producer Noel Clarke, who immediately decided to support the project and came onboard as an executive producer.

For the rest of the year we did a few more trips to Bosnia including one, totally unplanned, when Ratko Mladic was suddenly arrested. This was a turning point. Suddenly people were interested in us, our story and what we had to say, in the UK and, possibly even more importantly, in Bosnia. Due to the tireless work in the field by Mirko and Bosnia Producer Velma Saric, visibility and awareness of the project in Bosnia grew significantly.

Firstly the Institute for War and Peace reporting (IWPR) used stills from Uspomene for the yearly mourning event of the genocide in Srebrenica. Then, impressed with our trailer, the IWPR put it on the front page of its website. Then Radio Slobodna Europa uploaded a live interview with Mirko and the trailer on their website too, with a massively positive response. Finally Mirko and Uspomene 677 were invited to the conference ‘Picturing Moral Courage, Stories of survival’ in Sarajevo in July 2011. Mirko and characters from our documentary addressed several hundred young people and Mirko was a panellist in a discussion with Denis Tanovic, director of Academy award-winning ‘No mans land’. Incidentally, Mirko’s pictures from the documentary were used for the poster and the brochure of the whole event.

Then, after months of locking ourselves in the editing suite, here is the greatest surprise of all. Selection for Raindance, again on the strength of our very impactful trailer. Almost five years since the first photoshoot the film finds its way to a cinema in London’s West End and to the best Independent Festival in the UK. We hope this will be the first of many festivals and look forward to going on tour with the project in Bosnia, the US and as many countries as possible. Hopefully Raindance will bring us good luck. TO find out more about the project please read The Diary.

Bobovac is the most well known and fortified city of medieval Bosnia & Herzegovina. The city was built during the reign of Stephen II Kotromanic and was first mentioned in a document dating from 1349. It shared the role of seat of the rulers of Bosnia with Kraljeva Sutjeska. However Bobovac was much better fortified. Bobovac contained the crown jewels of Bosnia and it was the burial site for a few of the kings of Bosnia. These were Stjepan Ostojic, Tvrtko II Kotromanic & Stjepan Tomas. Bobovac is now a protected cultural site … that is what they say.

April 2011, I am back for another couple of weeks for the yearly commemoration of the dead in the war. 17 years after the war, it happens every year and it was happening today in Vlasenica, Eastern Bosnia. We find there President Bakir Izetbegovic. It is a touching and horrific day where, even after so many years from the war, newly identified bodies previously buried in mass graves are buried by their relatives. It feels like an extremely important day. We left from Sarajevo early morning to arrive in Vlasenica before the ceremony starts. After the main ceremony I go with the flow of the march, from the public space to the surrounding hills where the bodies are buried. I follow one family in particular that seem able not only to accept me but to also share all the ritual with me. I am filming them, silently following their every step. Their feeling is that is not the first time, for the woman, for the children, for the brothers. They know what a painful day it would be and how difficult it would be to be here. They act bravely ias they face unbearable pain, holding tears with immense effort. After over an hour of filming, that seems few minutes, I took the picture below…which, if you read between the lines, doesn’t need to be explained.

Sarajevo 2011. Our plan nicely lined up on the Vratnik living room. I have the strange sensation that everyone else is thinking I am totally bonkers. Planning everyday on a documentary like this may be slightly too much for people who are not used to film-makers. I am also worried there just will not be enough time to shoot everything I’d like to do. Maybe, for once in my life, I have to give up trying to obsessively plan every hour of my life and everybody else’s in my team too. I am just trying to make sure we are able to do the best for Uspomene,too many years spent dreaming about this project to mess it up now. Too many important young people counting on me now. We, I feel I can say we now, want to our best not only for this documentary but even more, for the possible future of this country. My vision has always been quite negative about the future of Bosnia. I have been so many times left speechless by the attitude of many Bosnians who can’t see a future together with all three ethnicities. This film has to be for this country and not for our own purpose, to make something that will touch people by focusing on its cruelty. Last night Velma and I had a long conversation, and we agreed that our attention should be focused on those very few teenagers who have the capacity to at least have “a vision for the future”. We need three young voices for this country, coming from all sides.

It was cold, but the idea of waiting for our quickly fished fished was keeping us warm.. delicious lunch..finally something filling, for once without rushing.

All we need is somehow a relief. Funnily enough Velma has a plan. She suggests to stop in Medjedja a small enclave in Republika Serpska few kilometer from Visegrad. We enter a small coffee place, called Edin Cafana. Very small place, just the bare minimum is around, nothing more nothing less. A very young boy is works there. His name is Edin. He must be 16 or something like that. We eat a delicious lamb prepared by Edina, Edin’s sister and get to know everyone else in the cafè. It Feels like an extremely close family, strong and proud of their identity. The stories of Medjedja are fascinating. We speak for hours with Edin’s father Refik who describes us how sorry he is for the life of his kids today. Edin has to wake up every morning to work on a mine to pay for his bus ticket to school. His school is in Visegrad and he is the only muslim in his class. But Edin is tough. he takes us to his mother graveyard, shares with us something we both feel is so precious and pure. Its is 9 pm, and we still have to drive back to Sarajevo. It was an incredible pleasure to spend few hours playing with some kids on a open space around their block of flats. They were running around with their own toys and guns made of wood.. my 5d set up was making them over excited. All the footage will end up being one of the most exciting sequences of the documentary.

Why are we not working together with Aida? Too much work for her I guess. Too complicated and probably too delicate, especially now decisions need to be made. Aida had another job, full time, and was working with me on Uspomene. So it all became probably too much – I’d love to ask her now. It’s all very understandable considering how impossible it is to work with me. Or so it seems…. But I am happy, I am confident that Velma will be able to change this project drastically, understanding my vision and pushing it it even further, i hope ; 0 . I also believe anything that happened in the past had a reason to happen. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I hope to find this people again. it is almost an obsession. I have to see those faces again and be confronted with my feelings of long time ago.

Faces I remember, faces I never wanted to forget. Somehow my aim is to find them again. The picture below was taken in Bugojno, the place where now seems we have found our new Croatian character, Zeliko. He was kept during the war in Iskra Stadium and seems interested in talking to us. Velma (our researcher that got so involved in the project that ended up being our Bosnian producer) told me we could probably meet him tomorrow and such a thought really excite me. This is what I am here for. The documentary is really coming together. I suddenly try to put together all I know about the place, I wonder if is the right place to portrait Croats as victims considering that brutal actions were taken against Bosniak (Muslims) as well. I repeat myself that Uspomene677 will be wider than one ethnicity. It will find its meaning, I know it.