Almost a decade ago, Bosnian director Una Gunjak won the European Film Award for Best Short Film for her debut short Chicken (2014), a powerful and direct reflection on the fragility of life and close proximity of death set in the Sarajevo of 1993, when snipers were a daily reality. This year, she returns to her home city and the Sarajevo Film Festival with her first feature, Excursion, screening out of competition on the back of its Locarno world premiere.
The time between the two films has allowed for a maturing of vision, with Excursion offering subtle and astute food for thought on what it means to come of age in a Bosnian society grappling to break free from the hardships of past generations, in which a legacy of fear simmers under the surface of public life. Gunjak explores, in a sensitive drama richly textured with detail, how a strong patriarchal bias leaves young women vulnerable to sexual double standards and a rumour mill of insatiable gossip that limits their ability for playful exploration and self-determination.
Iman (played with just the right mix of impulsivity and nervy self-doubt by Asja Zara Lagumdzija) is something of a misfit among her middle-school peers, her short crop of pink-tinted hair setting her apart in a tide of more classic femininity. Her huge crush on Damir, a slightly older boy who has shown a casual interest in her, is a source of obsessive anxiety. As he chats up other girls in the graffiti-daubed playground where the kids gather at night to drink, skate and posture, she can sense him slipping away from her — even though he had no qualms about lying to his friends that they had slept together. A white lie spirals into something far more serious, with potentially grave repercussions, as she claims in a game of “Truth or Dare” to have lost her virginity. Enjoying the sudden rush of attention, she then lets everyone believe she is pregnant.
Gunjak has a sensitive ear and eye for the fickle, shifting intensities of adolescent peer connection and the way moral judgments form and spread by mob rule and contagious societal panic. Her friends are curious and condemnatory about her false confession of sexual experience in equal measure, wanting to know every detail, even as they soon move to ostracise her in an “anti-Iman” online chat group. Particularly impressive is the way Gunjak captures the vivid teenage fantasy life that is a part of burgeoning identity formation, the imagination conjuring up a mental trial-run in preparation for grown-up realities and relationships to come, as kids feel out through imitation how they might become an adult someday.
For Iman, whose solar-system bedroom wallpaper surrounds her in an outgrown realm of childlike make-believe, her lie is simply a way to maintain her closeness to Damir and prolong the illusion that he is her boyfriend, by substantiating his story in the eyes of others. It’s the little power that she has, in a film that, with feminist indignation, shows coming of age for Iman as an initiation into sexual objectification at the whim of the man she is looking for love and validation from.
Aside from the practicalities of what a pregnancy at her age would mean for her future, Iman’s reputation hangs in the balance. While Damir stays free of consequences, she is asked not to attend religious studies class until her predicament is resolved, and even requested to consider changing schools, as she becomes persona non grata in all but official terms. In no time, the school scandal of Iman’s possible pregnancy embroils parents and teachers, who have already been in tense meetings about the destination for an upcoming excursion. Italy has been voiced as an option, but aside from the expense, parents question safety. The story of Serbian schoolgirls from Banja Luka who all got pregnant on a class trip has already been doing the rounds, whipping parents into a fever-pitch of outrage about what might happen if adolescents abroad escape round-the-clock supervision. Determining the truth and claiming control of the narrative are dangerous games in Excursion, where trust is low and there is everything to lose.
Director, screenwriter: Una Gunjak
Cast: Asja Zara Lagumdzija, Nada Spaho, Maja Izetbegovic, Mediha Musliovic, Izudin Bajrovi
Producers: Amra Baksic Camo, Adis Dapo
Cinematography: Matthias Pilz
Editor: Clemence Diard
Production companies: SCCA/pro.ba (Bosnia), Nukleus Film (Croatia), Bas Celik (Serbia), Salaud Morisset (France), Mer Film (Norway), Doha Film Institute (Qatar)
Sales: Salaud Morisset (France)
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (BH Film Programme) (also in Locarno)
In Bosnian
93 minutes
