The best Boris Ler’s movies

Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people - rescue or death? Which move should she take?

During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who's now a captive in his camp he oversees. Their once promising connection has become ambiguous as their motives have changed.

When a group of elite online gamers each receive a mysterious invitation to trial a state-of-the-art virtual reality video game, it’s a dream come true and impossible to resist. Arriving at the test site, the group step into hi-tech gear and prepare for a revolutionary, next-level gaming experience that brings modern warfare to life with frightening realism. At first it’s a unique and exhilarating experience. But what starts out like a dream encounter with cutting edge technology quickly takes a turn for the sinister. Once the group are attacked by enemy combatants, they soon realize this is no game after all. Make a mistake here and you pay with your life. Now these masters of the shoot ‘em up will have to fight for survival within a game gone bad, but this time it’s for real.

Sarajevo on 28 of June, 2014. At the Hotel Europa, the best hotel in town, the manager Omer prepares to welcome a delegation of diplomatic VIPs. On the centenary of the assassination that is considered to have led to World War I, an appeal for peace and understanding is supposed to start from here. But the hotel staff have other worries: having not been paid for months, they are planning to go on strike. Hatidza from the hotel laundry is elected strike leader even though her daughter Lamija, who works in reception, is firmly against industrial action. Meanwhile, in the sealed-off presidential suite, a guest from France rehearses a speech. Elsewhere, a television reporter conducts interviews about war and its consequences. Was Gavrilo Princip, the 1914 assassin, a criminal or a national hero? What long shadow does his deed cast into the present?

A story set in the former Yugoslavia and centered on a guy who returns to Herzegovina from Germany with plenty of cash and hopes for a good new life.

The film is a high-concept project with five stories exploring the themes of motherhood and pregnancy, directed by women filmmakers from five former Yugoslav republics. “Croatian Story” follows an anguished painter who must decide whether or not to keep one of her unborn twins, diagnosed with Down syndrome. “Serbian Story” finds an expectant mother in the same emergency room with a charming killer. “Bosnia-Herzegovina Story” centers on a financially strapped Sarajevo family whose son?s lover is pregnant. “Macedonian Story” unfolds in a clinic where a drug addict struggles to keep her baby, and “Slovenian Story” ends the omnibus on a humorous note with a nun who finds her own way to immaculate conception.

The armed conflicts of the 1990s not only visibly destroyed the land of the former Yugoslavia, but also left the deepest wounds in the memory of each of its belligerent nations. There are as many different interpretations of that bleak past as there are countries affected. It is therefore hard to expect absolute harmony when, less than two decades since the war ended, a diverse group of veterans gathers at a remote mountain hotel for a therapy session over several days. On the contrary, such a dangerously volatile situation can suddenly ignite by just one thoughtless word, or a seemingly dirty look. That’s because the former soldiers, obstinately holding on to their fundamental masculinity and their prejudices, refusing to expose the inhumanity of the atrocities perpetrated. However, this quietness is just about to be broken and hidden emotions are to be faced.

Five uniquely moving films about motherhood—bubbling up in the grocery store, the cemetery, or even a car ride—come together in this omnibus film set in Sarajevo.

A police officer Hamza has to work that night even though his wife has gone into labour, because the police are short-staffed. To make everything worse, it seems that people showing up at the station have decided to prove the old belief about the mysterious powers of the full moon and its influence on human behaviour. In the course of that one night, representatives of all the absurdity and tragedy of life in Bosnia and Herzegovina parade through the station and somehow help Hamza get ready for a new life.

What is the true phrase? Heart is where the home is? Home is where the heart is? Bajo (37) is Bosnian-born Swede. After 18 years he has to visit his hometown. Against his will, Sarajevo is changing him. But that does not make him less Swedish or more Bosnian, just more himself. Or simply, home is where you are.