Quo Vadis, Aida?

The film puts Aida, a mother and translator, at the center of a war controlled by male soldiers and officials. Aida repeatedly acts while male institutions fail, and the story gives women the main emotional and moral viewpoint. The ending follows her return to teaching and her effort to live beside families linked to the killers. Žbanić openly describes the film as using a feminist perspective, so this identity lens is central even though the story is about a real 1995 atrocity.

The film repeatedly shows the UN and Dutch peacekeepers hiding behind rules while civilians face death. The story presents international leaders as slow, weak, and more worried about procedure and political risk than protecting people. Žbanić says the UN should serve human rights instead of political interests. This is a strong critique of Western and international institutions, but it grows from the real Srebrenica failure rather than a broad attack on Western culture.

The film changes the real translator behind Hasan Nuhanović’s memoir from a man named Hasan into a fictional woman named Aida. Aida becomes a mother, wife, and teacher who carries the story through her family’s loss. Žbanić says she made the change so viewers could connect with a woman protecting her family and to show the war through a woman’s eyes. The change is central to the film, even though the surrounding events remain closely tied to documented history.

Serbian and Republika Srpska outlets and nationalist groups called the film anti-Serbian propaganda and said it demonized Serbs. The complaints spread through named media, protests, threats, and attacks on Serbian actors, so the dispute had real reach. The attacks said the film favored Bosniak victims and blamed Serb forces, but they were mainly a nationalist fight over Srebrenica rather than a broad DEI campaign. The X evidence found no anti-woke complaints, and isolated online claims had no wider pickup.

Žbanić has a strong record of feminist, war-memory, and human-rights films. Her work often questions nationalism, patriarchy, and institutions that fail civilians. Nuhanović’s record is mainly survivor testimony and historical accountability, not broad culture-war activism. The producers are mixed, with Deblokada showing a socially engaged pattern and the other producers showing limited or no such record.