Zbanic

The director of 'Quo Vadis, Aida?', Jasmila Zbanic, has seen her award-winning film and its cast targeted with threats, insults and hate speech over the past year, but she has not given up on her quest to get it shown in Serbia and Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity.

Feature film ''Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc), by Radu Jude, a Romania-Luxembourg-Croatia-Czech Republic co-production, has been awarded the Golden Bear for Best Picture at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival, held online March 1-5.

Two stories from the Balkans, told by a Romanian-born man and a Bosnian woman have been put on a shortlist of 15 films in the Best International Feature category for the upcoming Oscars, the US Academy Awards said in a statement on Tuesday evening.

It strikes a balance between authenticity - the film largely presents court-established facts about the Srebrenica genocide - and the artistic need to send a strong message. Zbanic uses characters that are based on real people, like Ratko Mladic, or UN commanders Thomas Karremans and Robert Franken, but creates others to represent the fate of the thousands of Bosniaks who suffered.