SOUVENIRS OF WAR

Italy | 2023 | 75 min

A group of uniformed men are playing softair in a wood. The simulated war actions take place where war happened for real, a few decades earlier, on the hills surrounding Sarajevo. Over twenty-five years after the end of the conflict in Bosnia, some survivors put up tourist activities. Several places of sorrow have become tourist attractions: a form of business, but also the road to a sort of catharsis in a country still haunted by the ghost of the war. Souvenirs Of War, halfway between essay and collective observational documentary, is an in-depth reflection on the memory of the war in Bosnia. Thirty years on from the outbreak of the bloody conflict, and with a new war at the gates of Europe, Georg Zeller places the spectator in front of a world that attempts to cope, with a different and sometimes speculative approach, with the legacy of genocide among organized tours, military commemorations, and virtual simulations. (a.d.)