OSCARS 2021: Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020)

The Oscars take themselves seriously. From the early days of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, they have prioritized serious movies – dramas and epics and stirring examinations of the human condition – over everything else. This is why comedies still have to fight to earn any recognition and why science fiction, horror, or stuff like that rarely gets acknowledge outside of the technical categories. (Even then, not so much these days.) This has had an unfortunate side effect of dreary dramas about atrocities dominating more niche categories, like International Feature or the Live Action Shorts. This is why “Quo Vadis, Aida?” feels like the third or fourth movie I've seen about the Bosnian genocide since I started giving a shit about the Oscars.

The time is July 11th, 1995. The place is Srebrenica, Bosnia. Aida works as a translator in a United Nations base, which is home to hundreds of people who have been displaced by the Bosnian War. As the Serb army invades the town, they begin to demand that the refugees in the base disperse. Aida does everything she can to insure a smooth transition of power but soon discovers that bloodshed is inevitable. She fights against the bureaucracy of the U.N. officials while trying to protect everyone in the base, which includes her husband and two sons. 

“Quo Vadis, Aida?” attempts to built tension by putting its protagonist up against one of the most frustrating things in existence: Government bureaucracy. The audience knows from the beginning that very bad things are going to happen here. From the minutes the Serbs arrive in the village, it's apparent that their intentions are far from peaceful. Anyone could have predicted what would happen yet the U.N. officials did very little to protect people. (At least as depicted here.) Aida repeatedly tries to impose the graveness of the situation to the people in charge, yet they constantly insists there's nothing that can be done. It doesn't take living through a genocide to relate to the powerlessness of receiving no help at all from the people who are suppose to protect you.

Watching “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” I was very surprised by something. I've seen enough dreary European movies about war crimes and tragedies that I thought I knew what to expect here: Your nose being rubbed in horrors and atrocities for two hours. “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” however, takes a surprisingly tactful approach when depicting the genocide. The film doesn't have an MPAA rating but, if it did, it would probably be a PG-13. There's little graphic violence. As the hour of the massacre approaches, the audience's stomach tightens up, well aware of where this is going. The film keeps the actual event just off-screen and makes it all the more gut-wrenching because of it. 

Our center in this story is Jasna Đuričić's performance as Aida. Đuričić is excellent at maintaining her composure, despite the increasing pressure on her, the growing fear she feels that things are going horribly wrong. Even in private, she mostly trades light-hearted jokes and banter with her husband and friends. It's only at the very end, when the point of no return is reached and tragedy becomes imminent, that Aida's carefully composed image of stability cracks. Đuričić's emotional outburst is deeply cathartic, even if it does little to stem the violence to come.

“Quo Vadis, Aida?” is not the kind of light watching you can just throw on in the background, obviously. Yet it's tact and patience does make it one of the less punishing, and more emotionally effective, films about the topic that I've seen. Though, much like “The Man Who Sold His Skin,” I am surprised by how much of this movie is in English. I suppose that makes sense when your lead character is a translator but it is odd that two of the nominees from the International category this year are about half-in-English. I'm not sure if that's just a coincidence or represents a concentrated effort from foreign studios to appeal to Academy voters. [7/10]