Conceived under siege, and brought up in war, the Sarajevo Film Festival is one of the world's most emotional, writes Simon Hattenstone.
There is a huge bang, followed by a collective shudder. "Welcome to Sarajevo," says the man at the bar, with an uneasy grin. We edge forward to see what caused the explosion. The uneasy smile becomes a grin. "Ah, fireworks!" They light up the night sky to celebrate the Sarajevo Film Festival.
The festival is in its ninth year. It started off as an act of cultural resistance when the city was under siege by Bosnian Serbs (assisted by the Yugoslav army) who wanted to create a greater Serbia. Not only did the festival survive a war in which 12,000 were killed, but it has grown into something very special. This year, more than 100 films are being shown - art-house movies, a tribute to actor-director Peter Mullan, Hollywood fare, a children's programme and a regional programme that boasts two fine films by Sarajevan directors.
The young and the beautiful are out in force at the first-night party. There is something of la dolce vita in the air - glamour and optimism and laughter. But when you listen to the conversations, so many are about loss.
Mirsad Purivatra is the festival's director. Until the war he ran Obala, the celebrated theatre group. But it became too difficult to produce challenging theatre in the siege, so he looked for a more practical cultural outlet. He took a projector into a cellar and started the First War cinema. Despite the grenades, people came to watch the films. The directors of the Locarno and Edinburgh film festivals then brought 20 films of their own to the Sarajevan cellar, and out of that was born the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Was it difficult to start a festival in such a divided city? No, he says, that's where so many people get it wrong - it was often portrayed as war between Muslims (who made up 44 per cent of Bosnia) and the Catholic Croats (17 per cent) and the Orthodox Christian Serbs, but the people who remained in Sarajevo were all fighting for a united multicultural city.
"Sarajevo was always very different from the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In spite of all the tragedies, Sarajevo never took any kind of revenge on the Serbian people," says Purivatra. "In Sarajevo, all the churches were protected during the war. This way of thinking was the biggest victory of Sarajevo as a multicultural city."
He says Sarajevans wanted people to come from other countries and see the reality of the siege. "No one is ashamed of what we did during the war. I know I was on the right side. I know I did not make any problems with my neighbours. How do you say it? I never provoked anyone."
All around us walls are pockmarked by bullets and shells. "I think my generation will never recover from the war," says Purivatra, shaking his head. "For example, just now there was some small explosion. I think it was car tyres, but for me that is the sound of the machine-gun. When we had the fireworks, it's like: 'Oh God, this is a grenade.' Any kind of line for tickets at the festival, my first thought is: 'The poor line for bread.' We are the generation with very deep traces."
These deep traces can be seen in the festival's two Bosnian movies, Fuse and Summer in the Golden Valley. Stylistically, they couldn't be more different. Fuse, made by Pjer alica, is a moving satire about Bill Clinton visiting a small village in Bosnia, and is a throwback to the Czech cinema of the 1960s. Summer in the Golden Valley, by Srdjan Vuletic, is pacier, with echoes of Trainspotting. But in another way the films couldn't be more similar - they are postwar movies, showing a Bosnia riven by poverty, distrust and corruption, and a people living with the ghosts of the recently dead.
I ask Purivatra if he thinks suffering has been a creative spur. Well, he says, there was always a strong film history here. "Even before war we had the great director Emir Kusturica making films in Bosnia. But yes, while it's evident that the war is terrible for life, for human beings, on the other side you are in an unexpected situation and the unexpected situations make so many possibilities to have different visions."
Last year, Bosnia's Danis Tanovic won an Oscar for No Man's Land.
Back at the Holiday Inn, where I am staying, another man, called Emir, is on night duty behind reception. He offers me a cigarette and talks about the war years he spent away from Bosnia in Hamburg. To get out, "there was only one way. A tunnel that goes underneath the airport. It took 40 minutes to crawl through it. Only 80 metres long, but you come out outside Bosnia".
He says that he grew up down the road from Pjer alica, but is less than enthusiastic about his namesake.
"Ach, Kusturica," he hisses with disgust. "He lives in Serbia. He's a friend of Milosevic. And he is a Muslim! He lived all his life here, he was a hero, and then he talks so much bad about Bosnia."
What Kusturica did, he says, is the ultimate betrayal. Kusturica, the double Palme d'Or-winning director of Time of the Gypsies and Underground, made the fatal mistake of leaving Sarajevo during the siege in the early 1990s, and seemingly taking sides with the Serbs.
Next day I meet Srdjan Vuletic. He is a handsome man, in his early 30s, and proud of his hennaed hair. He says the festival is so important to the city. "It gives us the opportunity to be happy and forget a little bit."
Vuletic is a Bosnian Serb, but always a Bosnian first. He shows me two bullet wounds in his leg. As he was riding to the hospital where he did voluntary work in the war, he was shot.
"This is exotic, huh?" He smiles.
"You know, it was when I became mature. I was 21 years old, and everything was fun. Then I saw so much tragedy in life."
Elma Tataragic, director of the regional programme that showcases films from the former Yugoslavia, was even younger when the siege started. "I was 15. It may be stupid to say this, but it was exciting at first," she says. It didn't take her long to realise what she was actually living through. "There is a proverb in Bosnia: 'It's horrible how human beings can get used to horrible things.' And it's true. You can get used to being bombed. You can get used to not having food, not having electricity, not having water."
Tataragic says you could either give up and kill yourself or do something about it, and thankfully, most people chose the latter. "After the war we had a lot of suicides, but not really during the war. Then there was a strange kind of energy. We had one big thing in common - we wanted to survive. We weren't fighting a cause. We were fighting for our lives. We were fighting for bread and water."
She talks about the time her mother was on the edge of a breakdown living in the basement, crying all the time, and her father was on the front line and the humanitarian aid arrived. She had already been wounded, but that didn't hurt as much as queuing for handouts.
"You felt like a piece of crap, waiting for someone to give you a piece of bread," she says. She winces. Like Purivatra and Vuletic, she still feels betrayed by the international community who were happy to give food but refused to sell Bosnians arms so they could fight back.
On Sunday, Anna, who works in the festival's press office, takes us to the tunnel. Her father went through the tunnel twice, but she has never seen it. Like many of the people with money, she and her brother and mother went to live in Croatia while her father stayed at home to fight.
"Well, it's eight years since the war finished, so we like to say it is a long time ago. It feels like yesterday."
Today, she says the economy is the biggest problem. "Many people want a return to the old Yugoslavia. Not just the older people. You know, it was never like the Soviet Union. There was more freedom, more of a mixed economy."
The tunnel lies underneath a house owned by the Kolar family. It used to stretch 80 metres, but there are only 30 metres left. The Kolars still live in the house, but it is now a museum. There are so many bullet-holes in the walls that it looks like part of the design.
Bajro Kolar tells us to bend our head and leads us through the tunnel. He says there were about three million trips made through the tunnel during the war. How did he get any sleep? His face eases into a tender smile. "I didn't. But it was worth it," he says.
Later in the day, we head off for the old front line. Our guide is a former Bosnian army general, his translator the Bosnian film-maker Haris Prolic. The first thing the general tells us is that he is a Serb. He looks at us, and says this reflects the strangeness of the situation in Sarajevo.
We travel into the mountains, from where the city looks even more beautiful. In the centre of the city stands a huge burnt-out former government building. It looks like a discarded high-rise car-park, a brutal, unwitting war memorial. We pass burnt-out cars and piles of ash where trees used to be. From the top, we can see mosques, churches and synagogues and graveyard after graveyard.
The general says that, apart from Jerusalem, this is the only city where Muslims, Jews and Christians pray next to each other. We stand in a graveyard where 1,470 people are buried. The general says it used to be a children's football pitch. "At first, the snipers were respectful, but before long they started shooting at funerals," the general says.
On the way down, we pass a house. "This is where my mother-in-law was shot," Prolic says matter-of-factly. "It is her home. She was outside, helping someone who had been hurt."
The last film I see at the festival is Gus Van Sant's Cannes prize-winner, Elephant, about two schoolboys who massacre their fellow pupils with machine-guns. There are no reasons given in the film for the killings.
There is silence at the end, then applause. It's a brave film to show here.
At the airport, I meet up with Peter Mullan. On the flight into Sarajevo, as he was fumbling for his passport, he had told me how he missed his connection. Now he's fumbling for his tickets and mobile phone. At the festival, his film, The Magdalene Sisters, was screened in the open air to close on 3,000 people. He says his mind is full of Sarajevo - the beauty, the hospitality, the horror.
"What these people went through . . ." he says, and words defeat him. "I've been to hundreds of festivals now, and this is in the top three. Possibly the top.
"What these people have been through . . ." he says again. "I'm coming back here. I'm definitely coming back. This place gets under your skin."
- Guardian service