VERDICT: A passenger train witnesses an act of ethnic cleansing in this well-drawn portrait of the wary silence of complicity that allows evil to triumph. Winner of the Palme D'Or - Short Film at Cannes.
The protagonist of The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent is not the eponymous man.
Instead, Nebojsa Slijepcevic’s low-key drama is about one of the passengers on a train from Belgrade in Serbia to Bar in Montenegro who did not stand up to the evident horror of what was happening on a tragic February day in 1993. The train, filled with 500 passengers, was stopped at the Strpci railway station in Bosnia by paramilitary forces who boarded and demanded to see everyone’s identification. Around 20 people were loaded into trucks, never to be seen again. Winner of the Palme D’Or – Short Film in Cannes earlier this year, Slijepcevic’s account follows an unnamed man (Goran Bogdan) as he observes the events.
Right from the first moment, when the train makes an unexpected stop and military types begin to bark orders outside, the man knows that something is not right. He watches on with consternation as IDs are checked, but when a soldier (Alexis Manenti) begins to aggressively question him and those in his carriage, the man’s backbone dissolves. Instead, he just watches on as a nervous younger man sat opposite him stutters about not having any papers and is reticent to explain who his family’s patron saint is. One man – an ex-captain in the army, Tomo Buzov (Dragan Micanovic), does challenge the behaviour.
Slijepcevic, who also wrote the screenplay, does an impressive job of handling such a shocking subject as the Strpci massacre without sensationalising or underplaying it. The scenario carries with it an in-built tension that pervades its 14-minute runtime but it is as much about the faltering resolve of the protagonist as it is about the steeliness of Tomo Buzov. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent is a perfect encapsulation of the kind of complicity that is required for such situations to occur, and the unique bravery it takes to stand up to such oppressive authority.
Director, screenplay: Nebojsa Slijepcevic Cast: Goran Bogdan, Dragan Micanovic, Alexis Manenti, Dusan Gojic Producers: Katarina Prpic, Danijel Pek Cinematography: Gregor Bozic Editing: Tomislav Stojanovic Sound: Ivan Andreev Production Design: Ivan Veljaca Production Company: Antitalent (Croatia) Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition Programme – Short Film) In Croatian 14 minutes
