The 2020 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” tells a story about the war atrocities in Srebrenica in 1995 that resonates too well with the present-day military conflicts and refugee crisis in eastern Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh. The plot revolves around the events of July 1995 in Srebrenica, overtaken by the Bosnian Serb army under the command of General Ratko Mladić. In the middle of the crisis, the Muslim refugees find a temporary shelter under the protection of the United Nations. When 8,000 men in Srebrenica ended up murdered, it left scars on the former Yugoslavia that will linger for decades. How could the European community allow this to happen? Who would take responsibility for the genocide?
The failure of the international organization to rescue civilians demonstrates that the (former) West remains largely indifferent to the problems of the European periphery. At the time, many following the news from abroad wondered how such genocidal violence could erupt in Europe at the end of the twentieth century. “Quo Vadis, Aida?” tells the story of how it could have happened, using the perspective of a common woman. A former English teacher and an interpreter for the United Nations mission, Aida finds herself in the position of middle-woman, left to negotiate the terms of exchange of the civilians with Mladic's men using only her natural power of persuasion. At one especially dramatic moment, she and a Serb soldier, her former student, have a totally normal conversation, reminding the viewer about the shocking surrealism of this war amid a multiethnic community. Aida is caught between entirely contradictory demands: her UN affiliation guarantees her some protection, which she tries to extend to her husband and sons, but she constantly needs to translate Serbian lies and UN ambiguities to secure safety for other Muslim civilians. The refugees are trapped, the international protectors are powerless, and the war criminals are in no hurry.
Can a regular well-meaning woman stop the massacre? The film subverts all our expectations about individual heroism and resilience so typical of war films. Aida indeed has some of those qualities, but her attempts to fail better only emphasize how trapped she really is. The title of the film borrows the Biblical phrase from the apocryphal Acts of Peter. St. Peter, fleeing from crucifixion in Rome at the hands of the government, meets a risen Jesus and asks him “Quo vadis?” to which Jesus replies: “Romam vado iterum crucifigi.” Peter thereby gains the courage to continue his mission and returns to the city to be martyred, crucified upside-down. The film asks a similar question about Aida's mission in the face of the inevitable crisis for her family. If she can save herself, why cannot she save her family and thousands of others?
Viewers are left ashamed of the actions of both Mladić and the UN. The line between perpetrators, accomplices, and victims blurs. But the ultimate effect of the film in our current historical moment is especially painful: while the final scene shows a version of post-war normalcy return to the region, viewers know what comes next. The unresolved military crisis between Russia and Ukraine, as between Armenia and Azerbaijan, leave us bitterly aware of the seeming permanency of interethnic conflicts in eastern Europe. Quo Vadis?
