the leading man is my tpye

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

. "Esma's Secret, Grbavica". Bosnia Hercegovina, Language Bosnian. Surprise Berlin 2006 Golden Bear prize winner by Jasmila Žbavićs is set in postwar Sarajevo. The Yugoslav wars of the early nineties have been largely forgotten in the wake of subsequent world events. However, over a decade later the wounds of the merciless conflict between Serbia and succession state Bosnia still stokes the coals of regional filmmakers. This gripping film stars Mirjana Karanovic as a war widow Esma, and Luna Mijović as her beautiful but troubled teenage daughter. Daughter wants to believe her missing father was a Bosnian martyr (shaheed) but is shocked when her mother reveals that she was raped by Serbians so her father would have been a Chetnik rapist. Very powerful. Jasmila Žbavićsm is a femme director to keep an eye on.

Whenever I watch film connected to Sarajevo I am touched to the bottom of my soul.So much was said about this film, that I do not have anything much to add except if you like films on ex Yugoslav theme this is a must see.Jasmila Zbanic always wanted to be a film director, and when you have a talent like she has it has to happen. I know the war stopped her for some years to become a successful film director, but she survived the war and she made it. Many Sarajevans can not say the same, dead mouth do not speak. On that theme watch other film made by Zbanic For those who can not tell the tales.Jasmila since we are the same generation growing up in a relatively small city like Sarajevo is, we knew all about each other. I also wanted to be a successful film director, may be I would of, if I did not like the other kind of films you do not like. You know those when actors have no clothes on while acting ;) May be the words you uttered: Petar Matic can not be a film director because he likes porn! condemned me for ever. Since that damnation happened all was bad for me, I would never have a real chance in life, not to say film directing was lost for me for ever. I know I did some semi professional work but that was really not good. I would give myself 1 out of 10 for those pitiful film directing I tried. You simply have to have training in the best film schools in order to make it. I never got to it. I thought there was time. Time expired for me.

Despite its romanticized, optimistic title, "Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams" actually takes place in a world of shell-shocked survivors. Nearly a decade after the end of the Balkans War, the citizens of Sarajevo (Grbavica is a quarter located in that city) are still attempting to pick up the pieces of their shattered psyches and somehow move on with their lives. Even as bodies are continually being unearthed in mass graves scattered throughout the area, and residents search desperately for remains of their missing loved ones, a veneer of "normalcy" has returned to the city, as citizens cope with the everyday concerns of earning a living, raising children, caring for aging parents, falling in love. Yet, the extent of the emotional scarring is still greatly in evidence: in women attending group therapy sessions designed to help them cope with their losses; in youngsters crowding into noisy nightclubs as a means of escaping the horrors of the past; and, most tellingly perhaps, in the use of dark humor and strangely inappropriate laughter as a major coping mechanism for the beleaguered survivors.Against this searing backdrop, "Grbavica" focuses on two main characters: Esma, a struggling seamstress who has lost a father and perhaps a husband in the war, and Sara, her teenaged daughter who, on top of the "growing pains" common to teens everywhere, has her own unique set of problems to deal with. One of those includes a major shocking secret about her father revealed late in the film. Mirjana Karanovic and Luna Mijovic, who make a completely convincing mother/daughter team, deliver heartrending, sensitive performances as the parent and child struggling in a world seemingly bereft of joy, hope and happiness, while Leon Lucev offers fine support as a potential love interest for the overburdened seamstress.Writer/director Jasmila Zbanic has fashioned a film that calls to mind the groundbreaking work by the Italian neo-realists of the post-World War II era. For despite the grimness of its setting, the film suggests that the healing process may have already begun for the nation as well as for its people, and that where there is life there is always hope. The very fact that "Grbavica" is an Austrian/Bosnian-Herzegovinian/German/Croatian co-production attests to that possibility.

A very touching story full of really exact details of daily routine in Sarajevo nowadays and a very typical atmosphere of a family without men just can't leave you indifferent whether you believe or not that Bosnian war was an inner affair of the former Yugoslavia without any Western participation, etc. The countries after wars or revolutions are full of women who can't re-start their private lives broken by some shock. The last scene in which the protagonist's daughter Sara (definitely named after Sarajevo!) together with her classmates sings a patriotic song dedicated to the capital of Bosnia makes recall Leo Tolstoy's "Patriotism is the last shelter of bastards" - well, I don't think so, yet patriotism may be really the last shelter of unhappy people. With all this very few people in the audience can notice that the protagonist Esma played by Kusturica's actress Mirijana Karanovic is a little bit too old for this role. Esma (as she recalls her student's years before the Bosnian war) should be not about 50 but about 34-35, if not of the same age as the film director Jasmila Zbanic, and she can't say jokingly "I swear by Tito!" since that generation didn't feel the "Titoism" that much (Esma should be about 6-7 years old when Tito died). Jasmila Zbanic and her European producers could hardly notice it but ... can they count??? Helas, being exact is like being responsible which is getting rare in our civilization. All the rest social and historic details known only to Yugoslavians are beyond my own knowledge. Well, can the spectators count, especially if they are members of jury in Berlinale?!