As If I Am Not There (2010) Reviews

• Hard to stomach, but an undeniably well made and affecting film

  davideo-22012-09-30

  STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Samira (Natasa Petrovic) is a young teacher from Sarajevo who takes a teaching job in a small village as the Bosnian war hots up. One day, as she is taking her class, she finds everyone being rounded up by Serbian soldiers and, while she protests she is merely there to work, she nevertheless finds herself rounded up with the women. From this point on, she finds her dignity and human rights ripped to shreds, as she is subjected to the most degrading treatment imaginable as a sex object, but, to save herself and the other women, she finds the inner strength and resilience inside to rise up and be counted as a person. It's a sad fact that sometimes the most affecting, heart wrenching stories involve being told the most unpleasant, disturbing ones, in order to feel their full impact. This is certainly the case with As If I Am Not There, which delves into the terrain of the Bosnian war in the early 90s. It's perversely fitting that it was not a widely seen film, because it holds little in the way of actual entertainment value...in fact, it's probably the furthest thing from entertaining you can imagine. In fact, sometimes you just feel like a sick person for watching it. But, as unflinching and terrible as some of the treatment is to watch, you have to see it in order to appreciate just what sort of hell went on. But the strong acting and writing make it into a worth seeing film, even if it is one of the more disturbing ones you'll watch. ****

• Tragic and haunting

  fais842010-09-16

  A poignant haunting look at the Bosnian War and the atrocities committed. The film focuses on a young Bosniak girl who winds up at a Serbian War Camp. From here a story of the worst of humanity and the strength that lies within people to endure unspeakable hardship unfolds. The actress who plays the lead character Samira gives one of the best performances I have ever seen on film and says more with her eyes than other actress can say with pages of dialogue. The director does a phenomenal job of capturing the horror or war and more importantly does not use sensationalist tactics to solicit emotional responses from the audience. The story itself and the performances from the actors are powerful enough where they can stand alone. A film that will likely fly under the radar - but an important one to see; as it acknowledges one of the saddest moments in recent history.

• Impressive, disturbing, haunting

  eulchen52012-12-13

  As someone else here already said, this is not entertainment cinema. In my opinion it's not even a film in the usual way. Samira a young, well protected and maybe a little naive teacher from Sarajevo leaves her loving family to work in rural village. Shortly after she arrived, war starts and soldiers take her and all the other women captive. As in many wars, the younger women are picked out, locked up separately and are raped, tortured and humiliated. Men are killed, children die, Samira is in constant shock and unable to react. The director is able to give you the feeling of being part of the movie, of nearly being part of the group of women with their fears. There is not much music and also spoken dialog is rare. This movie lives completely from the realistic atmosphere, so much that I had times I was totally frozen and could't breathe. Some scenes are nearly unbearable and I started crying without even noticing it. Yes, we have all heard that it is common in war situations that women are raped from enemy soldiers but this movie showed me that I never gave a real thought about what that actually means. This movie transports the feeling to you one-to-one and it's really hard to stomach. Natasha Petrovic transports her emotions directly to you, without words, mostly with her eyes and her face is really haunting you. If you dare to open yourself emotionally to her character you can feel the fear yourself. Also the end, when Samira comes to Sweden as a refugee, pregnant from rape, all her family dead, completely alone into a country which language she can't speak made me think a lot about how many women must have felt and feel in such situations. I how and if i would cope. This movie is important, because it shows how quickly things can change in war situations, how happy those of us must be who live in peaceful countries and how extremely important it is to keep the peace by all possible means. Absolute recommendation - if you dare!

• Incredible movie

  ofratko2011-10-10

  I kinda knew what to expect. The war in Bosnia was brutal. They didn't care about Geneva Conventions( I don't think they even heard about them) Rape was the instrument of the war by all sides. Thousands of Bosnian women were raped. There are many war movies but I think this movie is unique because it shows rape victims of war. Natasha Petrovic is incredible in this movie. Her eyes revealed everything every feeling. Hope to see her in different movie soon. And having read the book from Slavenka Drakulic I have to say that Juanita did great job. She didn't put blame on any side. You don't see army insignias and don't hears speeches about who started the war. You just see how innocent suffer in the war. This movie is very hard to watch and there are parts were you might even close your eyes. But it also shows strength of human being in midst of madness As a women I had to think what would I do in Samira's place. And probably the answer will be everything necessary in order to survive

• From the claustrophobia of a concentration camp back to the outside world

  anthonydavis262011-10-06

  This film was viewed at Cambridge Film Festival (UK) - 15 to 25 September 2011 * Contains spoilers * One usually gets so much of the feel of what a foreign-language film will be from the title that it has been given, and that can be misleading (or just a bad choice), so it is good to know that this one was intended. Obviously, such things should not carry too much weight, but there is the feeling in these words 'How can this be happening to me? How can something so outside my experience be taking place?' And this film shows a response to that horrible feeling of unreality. Any suggestion, as in another review, that it was just made to have some sort of gruesome residue of appeal that it does not really deserve is just so bizarre as not to merit any real further comment. Things on which this film relies happened (maybe to different people and at different times), and I really struggle to believe that anyone would think the film made just to exploit those people's suffering. It does not rejoice in that suffering, but shows how the small group of women with whom we end up managed – or chose to manage – in humiliating conditions after their menfolk had just been executed for no crime other than being men, and being from the wrong racial group. No one depicts rape for its own sake, and here, in the case of Samira (Nastasa Petrovic), it is a vehicle for us to witness her seeking to absent herself from the brutal and disgusting way in which she is being handled – 'treated' is too genteel a word for it. And, of course, there are worse atrocities that could have been committed (and which are visited upon a young girl in a cruel parody of the Christian cross and what it is meant to symbolize), but, for Samira, recently travelled from home and family to a new place where she expects to teach and care for children, this must be unimaginable, unbearable. When she expects to be raped again, but the soldier shown into her prefers to fall asleep next to her, there is a short moment of respite from the cruelty and dehumanisation, even though, as one of the women selected to satisfy the soldiers, she and they probably have better conditions than the others, with whom we lose contact until much later. For Samira, and for her increasing bravery, the decision comes to be that of staying a woman, of putting on lipstick, and not remaining the unwilling recipient of sex, but asserting her right to be a person, to reject the men's belief in their right to strike and abuse her. In what I read as a by-product of that assertion, she attracts the attention of the soldiers' Captain (Miraj Grbic), and swaps civilized – but still meaningless – love-making, rather than enforced copulation at the hands of insensitive and brutish men who do not even view her as human. Within the constraints of that role (and in a fine performance), he shows Samira such kindness as he can, but it is all too undeniable – and, at several points, cannot be denied – that they both know that he has every power over her, and that he just chooses to give her some respect, the respect denied to so many of the others from her adoptive village. The Captian seems partly drawn to her because she is educated, from Sarajevo, and believes in herself – in the ordinary course of the events that Samira could have had no knowledge of being about to unfold she would not have been there. When the painful physical and mental things that, for me, Nastasa Petrovic's acting render totally compelling, with her face seeming like a window through which her disbelief and sense of degradation seem transparent, are over, she cannot even go back to her home city or her family, because it is all gone. This is a story that needs to be told, but it in no way has that sense of a worthy subject that has been attributed to it – to see where Samira, the woman at the beginning, has come from, to see what has shocked her, traumatized her, and the legacy with which she is left in another country, and with which she seems to take steps to come to terms, is such a powerful piece of individual heroism that it truly offers hope where it feels least likely.