Stipe
might be a misanthropic drunk, but he periodically seeks enlightenment through
a New Agey handstand exercise. It is not
much to hang your hat on, but a baby Bosnian refugee is in no position to be
picky. A few heartstrings just might be
tugged in Nedžad Begović’s Jasmina (trailer here), which screened
last night as part of the 2012 Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York.
Jasmina
is not an orphan, at least not yet. Her
parents are doctors in Sarajevo, who care enough about their baby girl to
secure a place for her and her grandmother Safa in a humanitarian convoy headed
towards a picturesque town on Croatia’s Adriatic coast. As the shelling begins in earnest, Sarajevo
is cut off from the rest of the world, leaving Safa and Jasmina entirely on
their own. To make matters worse, Safa
must also contend with the aggressively obnoxious behavior of their next door
neighbor, Stipe. The compounded stress
takes a toll on her health.
At
first, doing the right thing does not come easily to Stipe, but once he
reluctantly starts looking after Jasmina and visiting the hospitalized Safa, he
starts to care for them both quite deeply.
It would sound like quite a convenient transformation, but Begović
deftly establishes a sad backstory for Stipe that makes it all quite
believable.
While
Jasmina is a cute kid, the film is not cloying, always remaining cognizant of
the tragic event unfolding in Sarajevo.
The real life daughter of cinematographer Almir Djikoli, young Amila is
an unusually expressive, camera-friendly baby, which helps a lot. Bosnian theater actor and television star Zijah
Sokolivić nicely conveys both Stipe’s drunken buffoonery and genuine pathos,
without blatantly imitating the old Chaplin shtick. His late blooming pseudo-chemistry with Nada
Durevska’s Safa is particularly touching.
As
is sometimes the case with independent filmmaking, the production of Jasmina was a real family affair, with Begović’s
daughter Naida serving as co-production designer and also representing the film
last night during the BHFF’s post-screening Q&A. Despite the scant budget, the film looks
great. Evidently, their primary location
is a Croatian village practically rendered a ghost town because of water-supply
contamination, which is a terrible waste, considering its old world character
and stunning seacoast scenery.
