Welcome To Sarajevo
Beautiful Jugoslavia only a few short years ago was a most delightful vacation spot offering tourists lovely picture-postcard locations such as Mostar with its bridge across the river. Bombed to hell! There is nothing like a civil war to bring out the worst in what is euphemistically referred to as humans. Point blank shooting of prisoners who only a little while ago were one's neighbors is a daily occurrence.
This exciting film, based on true stories, is about one typical city, Sarajevo, caught up in a bloody war. It was world-famous a few years ago when it hosted the Winter Olympics. It is also about the foreign correspondents who live dangerously while snipers peck away at anyone or anything that moves.
Michael Henderson (Stephen Dillans) has been all over the world covering many Wars-Of-The-Month. But for sheer inhumanity, Yugoslavia wins the prize. His job is to get the best stories, the best pictures, for the media's viewers, readers back home. What is difficult to understand is that these correspondents risk their lives to bring us the news but back home many people have never even heard about Sarajevo and that its stories can be bumped for the less than earth-shaking news of the divorce of the Duke and Duchess of York, Andrew and Fergie.
Nightfall finds Henderson and the others meeting in the dimly generator-lit hotel's bar where they exchange stories about what they witnessed that day. . . while bombs and sniper shots are heard in the background. American journalist Flynn (Woody Harrelson) daily risks his life for a story. Some feel he is engaged in glamorizing his own heroics rather than telling the story of the war. Flynn, however, maintains that no one knows Sarajevo but they certainly have heard of Flynn.
The movie follows the story of the Ljubica-Ivezic orphanage run by Mrs. Savic (Gordana Gadzic). The orphanage houses newly-orphaned children as well as those who were orphaned before the war. Because of the political-religious climate in this divided country, some children are ruthlessly kept from being evacuated from the front line area.
At the orphanage, Henderson is enchanted by Emira (Emira Nusevic) a young orphan who is determined to get out and away from all this. Without fully realizing what difficulties and situations lie ahead, Henderson promises he will help her.
Marisa Tomei has the role of an American aid worker. Others in the cast include Kerry Fox, Gorn Visnjic and Emily Lloyd.
With heartbreak and excitement WELCOME TO SARAJEVO will keep you on edge. This is a film not to be missed.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom.
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Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
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