 During the four-year
siege of the Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo, hundreds of thousands
of bombs rained upon the city from the surrounding hills. Every
shell exploding on a road or paved area left an imprint resembling
that of a flower. Today, despite the millions spent to restore the
city, many of these craters remain, their 'petals' painted red and
referred to as 'Sarajevo roses' by it's citizens. These monuments to
the war also represent an appropriate epitaph for the city:
Sarajevo, that vibrant, cosmopolitan and multicultural city of a few
years back, has been on the verge of disappearing. The restoration of the
capital has, up to now, been purely cosmetic. Deep, indelible scars
remain.
In August 1992, four months after the first shots were fired there, Roger Richards, a US photojournalist and writer,
began covering the siege of Sarajevo through all its stages for the Washington Post, Miami Herald and Gamma Liaison photo agency.
He has returned to the city several times after the war, documenting
in photographs and video the slow transition of the city to peace. So many
times through the years he has been asked, "What is so special about
Sarajevo?" This film attempts to show to the world the spirit of a
unique city. The photographs will be combined with digital video
shot in the present day and right after the war.
During the siege, Roger met and befriended Dina Kunic and her family. Dina and Roger were married in Sarajevo in 1994, so that Dina's elderly grandparents could be present at the ceremony. She has not been back since.
 Today, Roger and Dina and their
two children live in America along with many of the Kunic family, who have made their new homes in the US and Canada. Like so many families in the old Sarajevo, the Kunic clan contains a mixture of
Bosnians, Croats and Serbs. Roger Richards has documented on digital video many of the key moments the family has gone through since their move
to the USA. Scenes include the buying of land by Dina's father, Dino (he was a well-known television personality and musician in Bosnia), Dina receiving her US citizenship on the day of her daughter's second birthday,
and the arrival and extended visit of Dina's grandparents and various family gatherings comprising four generations of the Kunic family.
As much as Dina and her
parents tried to get them to stay in America, the grandparents felt
compelled to go back to Sarajevo and Roger escorted them back there
in August, 1999. Apart from documenting their return to the small
apartment they moved into since losing the family home during the
war, Roger also filmed and photographed the people and places of
Sarajevo, five years after the bullets and shells stopped.
 He was able to capture the dispirited atmosphere and its cause in a unique way. He interviewed and powerfully portrayed both the haunted and the hopeful.
During the film viewers will meet Adnan Rustempasic, 42, a Bosnian.
Over footage of him visiting the battlefield ruins where he fought a
desperate battle to defend Sarajevo from the besieging nationalist
Serbs, his haunted eyes tell another story. We also follow him to
the spot where his 4-year-old son was killed with four other
children by a Serb mortar shell. Amid the laughter of children
playing nearby, he shudders as he looks down on the 'Sarajevo rose'
that still remains imprinted in the pavement of the apartment
courtyard where his son was killed. Adnan migrated to the US after the war, settling in Chicago, but finally decided to return to Sarajevo as he "...could not live where my son was not buried". He and his wife now have a daughter. Adnan is haunted by the death of his son and is searching for peace.
We are introduced to Brankica Petrovic, 27, a Bosnian Serb woman whose brother, Branko, was shot dead by a sniper on a Sarajevo street during the siege. Over scenes of Ms. Petrovic and her elderly mother tending the grave of her brother at the Lion Cemetery, she explains why today's Sarajevo is no longer, in her opinion, a suitable place for life. She says "Now it's not war. But we feel war everyday. I remember war everyday. And that's a terrible thing, you have war your whole life. You don't have a normal life. I don't know, but I don't see me here. No."
 The film shows the realities of life in immediate post-war Sarajevo: scenes of people trying to rebuild their lives, reconstructing their destroyed homes in neighborhoods around the city still devastated by war. Images of Gypsy refugees from Kosovo living among burned-out apartment towers along the former frontline of the siege; hundreds of Muslims gathered for Friday afternoon prayers at the 500-year-old Bey Mosque, young children running around and playing as their parents worship; the Markale market, now teeming with life and activity, with a large, red-painted 'Sarajevo rose' now marking the spot where a single 122mm mortar shell landed and killed 68 people in February 1994; and Senad, an artisan in Sarajevo's old quarter of Bascarsija who transforms old artillery and mortar shell casings into works of art and creating, in Senad's words, "Sarajevo's best product".
The
overriding message of this film is of the alienation and loss caused by
war, but with hope for the future. Those who have stayed in Sarajevo and those who have
left both share the same sense of estrangement from the city that once
was. But holding on to most of its unique spirit despite living under a
rain of shells, daily bloodshed and the near starvation of its
citizens makes it a special place. It is a story worth telling.
Sarajevo Roses is being
filmed with Panasonic 24p camcorders, combined with footage from Canon
XL-1, GL-1, Elura DV cameras. The film is being edited with Apple's
Final Cut Pro editing software on Apple G5 computers.
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