Winning the Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival, Bosnian writer-director Jasmila Zbanic arrives with an emotional belter in her debut feature, Grbavica. All the more relevant now in its quietly disconcerting post-wartime musings, the film packs all the wallop of a shotgun to the gut with the revelations sowed from the secrets held between a mother-daughter pairing of waitress, Esma (Mirjana Karanovic) and her pubescent daughter Sara (Luna Mijovic). Sara, a wartime baby, believes her father to be a hero for the cause and a monetary benefit that derives from that belief spurs her inquisitive nature that begins to unsettle Esma. Alluding to bankrupt masculine values in the region among other things, the films raison d'etre is to remind audiences of the echoes of war and the numerous communal crises still facing its people. Grbavica falters when it shows too much leg and too little narrative flexibility when leading up to its devastating conclusion, marvelously acted upon by its leading ladies.

Rating: 3 out of 5