Tarik Hodžić: Bosnian Knight
Producer Adnan Ćuhara. Shown, world premiere August 16 at Sarajevo Film Festival.
I quote Sarajevo Times (March 2 2025), where the film crew gives this congratulatory note the 1st of March, to the independence day of Bosnia and Herzegovina:
“The foundation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a centuries-old culture, in that culture is the royal heritage, in the heritage is the script and the Bosnian language. Part of that culture are the remains of history. Ancient positions, victories and defeats, restless centuries recorded on paper with evidence kept in the museums of the world. We learn more about the roots of its existence every day. The basic duty of every person who calls Bosnia his own today is to know its past, and build the present from solid ideals. Several centuries later, history books, it will mark the time of today’s man. It remains our responsibility to make our time worthy of a royal country. Bosnia and Herzegovina is celebrating its independence today, the day when it became a sovereign and independent state of all its citizens.”
The text reflects what is the motivation behind and intention of the film that I saw – has to be mentioned – on my MacBook; I can imagine how it was for the viewers in Sarajevo to get picture and sound on a big screen! Impressive for sure in terms of camera work and sound design, the latter from the very beginning till the end with patriotic, passionate singing staged in the glorious landscapes, where the protagonist, our guide to Bosnian history, Sead Delic, takes the viewer on horseback or on foot meeting people, who are historians, who know about Bosnia and are able to convey the information to Sead and us the viewers.
There is a lot of information to take in in these documentary interviews, that take us to Vienna, Budapest, Venice, Rome… it is very interesting, I learned a lot having to confess that sometimes during the film I felt that there was too much… is the film too long, maybe for one who comes more or less “naked” information-wise.
Sead with his long hair has his own story. He comes from Glogova, where (wikipedia) a massacre took place in the early days of the Bosnian war in 1992. He was in the army JNA, escaped, survived the Srebrenica genocide and left the country for the USA. He returns to Bosnia in the film being the storyteller, he is good for the film, both as the lonely rider and as the curious Bosniak, who is searching for the soul – the identity of a country.
Production value? You dare say! For one who is used to a more classic documentary language, observational and/or hybrid, there is maybe an overkill of drone shots shifting to good scenes with Sead and the people he meets. Interested to hear what people in Sarajevo thought…
1 hour 47 minutes, Bosnia, Croatia
The photo taken from the mentioned article in Sarajevo Times. No name credit.
