Original Title: Ničija zemlja
Language: Bosnian, English, French, German
Writer: Danis Tanovic
Main Cast: Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Georges Siatidis

A Bosnian and a Serb are trapped in a trench in no man’s land with a booby-trapped soldier. The UN and the world’s press arrive to further muddy the waters…

Maggie O’Kane was the Guardian’s frontline reporter during the Bosnian war, and in a 2002 article she paid tribute to No Man’s Land, the first film to capture the horror of the conflict:

“… the reason why Danis Tanovic’s film is different is because he lived his war. He spent two years in the trenches where his film is set. It tells the story of two soldiers, one Bosnian, one Serb, who end up stranded in the same trench, next to the booby-trapped body of another soldier. Into the tragic farce comes the heroic French UN sergeant, followed by the press, poised to turn UN impotency into an international incident.

The result, No Man’s Land, is without doubt the best film made so far about the Bosnian war. Tanovic was one of the Bosnian army’s official cameramen and his film captures not only the fighting but also the other factors that compound the horror of those years. It explores the political spinning – the way the media was controlled to feed viewers with a distorted view of the conflict…”

Read the full article here

Winner of a staggering forty-two awards, among them, the Best Foreign Language Oscar 2001