Hellish tale in Sarajevo

IRISH writer-director Juanita Wilson’s As If I Am Not There (Ireland/16/109 mins) is a harrowing tale of one woman’s degradation during the Bosnian war.

Seconded to a rural village, Sarajevo schoolteacher Samira (Natasa Petrovic) is rounded up by Serb forces and subjected, along with her fellow prisoners, to repeated torture in a so-called ‘rape room’. The subject matter is horrifying, but Wilson — who won Best Director, Best Script and Best Film at the recent IFTAs — has crafted a sublimely nuanced testament to the human spirit. The tone is bleak, certainly, but Tim Fleming’s masterful camerawork plays its part in contrasting the women’s hellish experience with haunting moments of beauty.

Wilson, whose short film The Door was nominated for an Oscar last year, directs her first feature with an assured touch, never flinching from exposing the horrors Samira encounters without ever sensationalising the dramatic elements. Petrovic, also making her feature-length debut, turns in a mesmerising performance of grace under pressure that ultimately transforms the traumatic events of As If I Am Not There into an uplifting experience.