Swiss Bosnians process trauma of war at Sarajevo Film Festival

Two Swiss documentaries, The Boy from the River Drina and No One Will Hurt You, delve into a violent history, rejecting the silence over the Bosnian War maintained by those who fled the former Yugoslavia and sought refuge in Switzerland. The personal, even taboo themes of these stories allow the directors to process trauma and promote healing. Zijad Ibrahimović and Dino Hodić were only boys when their families fled Bosnia after war broke out in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Both are now at home in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and both are filmmakers turning to their personal histories to breathe new life into the stories of migrants from Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. Ibrahimović’s The Boy from the River Drina (Il ragazzo della Drina) and Hodić’s No One Will Hurt You (Nessuno vi farà del male), two Swiss documentaries about returning to Bosnia to understand and to heal, recently screened at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival. This important creative platform has its ...