EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

qigath I saw this film at the 2007 Sarajevo Film Festival. It shows the parallels between the Bosnian war and the partisan struggle of World War Two. Especially poignant scenes are numerous. For example, when the patrol has killed everyone at an outpost they've come across. A member of the patrol remarks that one of the dead they killed went to school with him. At another point, the patrol look across a field and see the campfires of the long-dead World War Two partisans -- or was it fire eating the souls of the dead, as described in the Koran? Double entendre. The final scene has the departed soldiers standing together, the dead partisans from World War Two and the dead member of the patrol in the Bosnian War, standing together in the graveyard. This movie is a masterpiece of design and of photography.

mila271 This movie is just another of those from Croatia, which is trying to picture WW2 wrongly. First of all, there is 2 parallel stories, one from WW2 and another one from recent war in former Yugoslavia. Scenario is weak, based (and not justified) on "ghost" - although there are no real ghost here...Everything is unrealistic (at least the costumes are done well). Group of Croatian domobrani, with its ustashi captain is trying to fight partisans. We can not see the partisans. Battle scenes are weakly done. Nothing is seems to be good enough here. I just wonder why Velibor Topic accepted this role, story is weak and there is not really space fot him to show how good actor he is. Other acting is also poor and under-average. Croatian ustashi regime in WW2 (supported by Germany),killed and slaughtered thousands of innocent people (mainly Serbs and Jews) yet here it is not even mentioned, ustashi crimes are forgotten here. Ustashi and domobrani are just the group of armed people running through woods, and at the end we see "ghosts"?! No real end, no real story. I gave 1/10

ot_lowrider I saw this movie on film festival and it was pretty pointless from my opinion! First off all scenario is pretty bad! There is no any special action except people running through wood! First of all when I've heard that movie have (or at least should have) two crossing stories from Second World War and Yugoslavian Civil War and that lasts 90 minutes I was amazed, but after watching the movie even those 90 minutes were too long. In both scenes there is just running through woods. What I liked is production. The way camera moves through scenes and from which angles scene rolls is pretty good. And that is only thing I pretty much enjoyed. I also must say that Im disappointed in acting. Im not very familiar with new generation of Croatian actors but all actors in this movie are pretty much amateurs. There is much more better actors in Croatia and movies too. Im not even sure how this movie get on festival!?

toninobeman This movie is phenomenal, and, dare I say, the best Croatian war movie ever filmed since it's independence. Croatia has gone through a rough cultural period after the war. Some of it's films were either politically indoctrinated, or just simply bad, but be it as it may, Croatias filmmakers lost respect that they once held as a part of the Yugoslavian film makers. Little by little, people just discarded all Croatian on celluloid as "bad", and would rather indulge in an afternoon Holywoodly brainwash, in opposition to searching for the "needle in the stack of hay" of the Croatian movie. Needless to say, this movie brings it all home. Superb script and out of this world directing, followed by some tremendously good acting by Filip Sovagovic and Velibor Topic just might bring back our faith in the Croatian cinematography. Little mistakes in the casting were visible (the Ustase commanders were terrible), but still, this movie deserves nothing less of a pure 9/10