Synopsis
Kym, an Australian tourist, decides to travel to Bosnia. Her guidebook leads her to Višegrad, a small town steeped in history, on the border of Bosnia and Serbia. After a night of insomnia in the ‘romantic’ Hotel Vilina Vlas, Kym discovers what happened there during the war. She can no longer be an ordinary tourist and her life will never be the same again.

Program Note
Jasmila ŽBANIĆ debut feature film, Grbavica, won three awards at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006: Golden Bear, Peace Film Award and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. A film director from
 Bosnia, she brought to light the painful and long-lasting aftermath of the war that had wounded women with its brutal violence. Grbavica chronicles the history of violence that gets passed down from
 one generation to the next in the form of a new wound. The story takes place in Grbavica, a village in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo that was the site of a Serbian Army prison camp during the Bosnian
 Civil War and presents the atrocities of the war through female perspectives. In this year’s opening film, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales, Jasmila ŽBANIĆ scrutinizes Bosnia and Herzegovina with her
 camera, some twenty years after the heart-wrenching atrocities of the Bosnian Civil War. During the war, over 20,000 Muslim women had been systematically raped and a staggering 100,000 people were
 murdered as part of ethnic cleansing. The era of the Cold War is long gone and people have forgotten the horror of the Civil War. For many foreign tourists looking for different sceneries, Eastern Europe is
 an exciting new destination now that its forbidden gates are open. Australian performance artist Kym travels to Bosnia and Herzegovina for a holiday on her own. Having found stunning sceneries, friendlylocals and a peaceful hotel, Kym is happy with her choice of holiday destination. Yet, she is unable to fall asleep in such a wonderful place. Upon her return to Australia, she carries out a belated research into the places that she saw, walked around and photographed. She then realizes what happened there. Kym flies back to her previous holiday destination and begins seeking the truth with her camera.

 During her second visit, everything seems changed. People are no longer friendly. Rather, they are threatening, telling her to stop asking questions and trying to drive her away. They do not want an
 outsider to dig up something they themselves have buried. In Grbavica, the director gives us a stark reminder of history in order to ensure that the wounds of the women living there are not hastily stitched up. Based on the experience of actress and co-writer Kym VERCOE who visited Bosnia and Herzegovina, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales now aims to raise outsiders’ awareness about the violence committed in the past Just like BYUN Young-joo, who, in her The Murmuring trilogy, lends an ear to the stories of former comfort women who fell victim to cruelty under Japanese imperialism, Jasmila ŽBANIĆ gives a voice to the many nameless and silent woman victims during the war. We cannot undo what happened but we should never forget. [LEE Angela]