No Man's Land

No Man’s Land is a 2001 film directed by Tanis Danovic. The movie plot centers around the trench between the warring Bosnian Muslim and Serb sides called “no man’s land”. A group of Bosnian Muslims are opened fire upon and the (supposedly) last remaining one, Ciki (Branko Djuric), is left in no man’s land. Two Bosnian Serbs, an old man and a rookie named Nino (Rene Bitorajac), are sent in to make sure that there were no survivors. The two Serbs set a mine under a Bosnian Muslim’s body and are ambushed by Ciki. Nino survives the rapid gunfire and Ciki can’t bring himself to finish him off. Then, to add to the tension, the booby-trapped body named Cera (Filip Sovagovic) wakes up and can’t move or he will blow everything to smithereens. The rest of the movie is a half-hearted rescue mission for both sides, with crazed reporters demanding actions from the military.

The movie opens with Ciki and his groups lost in the fog, a metaphor for the chaos and uncertainties going on in former Yugoslavia. “No Man’s Land” plays with expectations about what happens in war movies where men from opposing sides meet. Generally in a movie, the two men bond, become friends, and realize that the war is stupid. In this movie, the men bond, but not in the way we expect them to. They realize that they have things in common. Ciki and Nino knew the exact same girl and they speak the same language, but they hate each other. They speak of the atrocities committed against their own side as if the other man has personally done it himself. The years of hatred between the two groups can’t be erased by a short time in a trench.

As the gun rotates between the two men, the gun-wielder makes the other man say that the war was his side’s fault. But saying it doesn’t mean that the man being forced to say it has changed inside. Both still believe that they are not at fault for what is going on. When the man with the gun demands something of the other and is asked why he should do that, the answer is “Because I have a gun and you don’t!”

The film is an anti-war film. It stresses how petty and silly the hatred between the two men is. This movie probably had an impact on Americans because it was easier for people from the United States to see the futility of war in this movie, because we don’t understand Balkan politics and haven’t experienced the hatred between the Croats and the Serbs. When I see a movie about racial prejudice during the Civil War, I realize why there is such tension between the blacks and the whites. But I haven’t lived where Ciki and Nino lived, and I don’t understand how they can hate each other when they have quite a bit in common and seem like semi-decent fellows.