Quo vadis, Aida? (2020)

(Netflix streaming, November 2022) There are times where a title card does most of the work, and fictional fundamentals do the rest. In the case of Quo vadis, Aida?, the only things you really need to know are: The film takes place during the mid-1990s Bosnian war, specifically during one of the worst episodes of the war—the Srebrenica massacre of 8000 men and boys. Our viewpoint character is a schoolteacher working as a translator for the UN, and is privy to the discussions taking place during that time. I don’t really need to tell you more for you to understand that this is not going to be a fun movie. Indeed, much of it is about futile efforts to get anyone (starting with the UN) to intervene in the light of mounting deaths. Soberly written and directed by Jasmila Žbanić, Quo vadis, Aida? is film-as-moral-lesson far more than film-as-entertainment and as such should be approached carefully. It’s also a necessary rewrite or rather a reminder that the 1990s were not, contrary to some emerging portrayals, the calm and golden decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11—pair it with something like Shake Hands with the Devil and you’ll have enough to convince you that international morality took a holiday during that time.