The fearless American war correspondent Martha Gelhorn once said that of all the wars a reporter covers, you only 'love' one. Bosnia was my 'love'. The film is based on the true story of British TV journalist Michael Nicholson, who adopted a Bosnian child when covering the conflict there. The brilliant Stephen Dillane plays a reporter who questions news values when his stories about a besieged orphanage are overtaken by the Duke of York's divorce. All I did was bitch a lot and meditate on ways of barracking then UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd for facilitating the Bosnian genocide (Constant Reader: I grew up eventually). Nicholson/Dillane did something more constructive and adopted a young Bosnian girl with no future. It's pretty much spot on, filmed in the ruins of the real Sarajevo. Watch out for Emily Lloyd playing a thinly disguised version of Guardian correspondent Maggie O'Kane, the reporter, who along with Newsday's Roy Gutman, set the standards (moral and journalistic) for the coverage of that war. But I was still annoyed by the filmmakers' careless failure to cut the grass that grew thickly around the rubble in the five years between the actual war and the actual filming. It looked all wrong against how I remembered it. Silly but there it is.
For a different take on that war, try one of Emir Kustorica's memoirs, Zivot je cudo, or the excellent BBC TV film Warriors.
For a different take on that war, try one of Emir Kustorica's memoirs, Zivot je cudo, or the excellent BBC TV film Warriors.