Taglines: To get the story, they’ll risk everything.
Welcome to Sarajevo movie storyline. In 1992, ITN reporter Michael Henderson (Stephen Dillane) travels to Sarajevo, the besieged capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He meets American star journalist Jimmy Flynn (Woody Harrelson) on the chase for the most exciting stories and pictures. Henderson and Flynn have friendly arguments and differences in the intervals between reporting. They stay at the Holiday Inn, which was the primary hotel for the press in Sarajevo during the siege.
After a previous translator proves corrupt and inept, ITN hires Risto (Goran Višnjić) to be Henderson’s translator. Their work permits them blunt and unobstructed views of the suffering of the people of Sarajevo. The situation changes when Henderson makes a report from an orphanage located on the front lines (Ljubica Ivezic Orphanage) in which two hundred children live in desperate conditions. After increasingly brutal attacks fail to make the lead story in the UK, Henderson makes the orphanage his lead story to try to bring full attention to the war.
When American aid worker Nina (Marisa Tomei) organises a UN-sanctioned bus-borne evacuation of several orphaned Sarajevan children to Italy, Henderson convinces Nina to include a Bosniak girl from the orphanage, Emira (Emira Nušević), to whom Henderson had made a promise to evacuate. Nina knows this is an illegal act – Emira’s mother is still alive and signed no papers authorising the evacuation – but the orphanage director allows it because of the desperate circumstances. Henderson and his cameraman accompany the evacuation under the pretense of covering it as a news story.
Despite a UN escort, Bosnian Serbs hinder the evacuation at several points along its route. The final harassment is the worst – a group of Chetniks halt the bus, forcibly disembark the Bosniak Muslim children and put them on their armed lorry, presumably to repatriate them.
When Henderson finally makes it to London with Emira, Emira quickly becomes a member of Henderson’s family in a comfortable London home. After an ambiguous interval of perhaps 100 days, Henderson receives word from his former producer, who is still in Sarajevo, that Emira’s mother wants Emira back. Henderson returns to Sarajevo, now riven not only by the siege but also by internal organised crime, and seeks out Risto, who has become a Bosnian-Herzegovinian soldier.
Henderson recruits Risto to find Emira’s mother. They nearly succeed, but the unstable situation unravels around them and they are forced to retreat. When Risto is killed by a sniper in his own home, Henderson falls back on Zeljko (Drazen Sivak), a concierge at the Holiday Inn who Henderson had helped in previous Sarajevo tours. Zeljko negotiates the streets and road-blocks that lead to Emira’s mother. As prelude to signing the adoption papers, she outlines the reasons she wants Emira back. She cannot in good conscience bring Emira back to Sarajevo, though, and she signs the papers.
Welcome to Sarajevo is a British war film released in 1997. It is directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Emira Nušević, Kerry Fox, Goran Višnjić, James Nesbitt, Emily Lloyd, Juliet Aubrey, Gordana Gadzic. Screenplay by: Frank Cottrell Boyce. The screenplay is by Frank Cottrell Boyce and is based on the book Natasha’s Story by Michael Nicholson.
Michael Winterbottom portrays the events with brutality. In the opening sequence, there is a sniper attack on a wedding procession. Other shocking sequences include Henderson stumbling upon a massacre at a farm-house, a Bosnian-Serb officer nonchalantly executing groups of Bosniaks and Henderson’s arrival in the immediate aftermath of the first of the Markale Massacres.
Shot just a few months after the war on locations in Sarajevo and Croatia, the film uses real ruins and war debris to give the film a feeling of authenticity. Many scenes of the characters witnessing and reporting on street carnage were intercut with video footage of the historic events.
Two widely known pieces of music were among those used in the film. “Don’t Worry Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin is used ironically, played against scenes of the siege of Sarajevo, with people being wounded by bombs, blood everywhere on the streets, etc. The second piece is “Adagio in G minor” by Remo Giazotto, based on a fragment from Sonata in G minor by Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni; it has been used in many films and advertisements since being popularized in the American anti-war movie Platoon.
House of Love’s “Shine On” (Creation, 1987) and Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored” (Silvertone, 1989) are among the English independent rock classics featured in contrast to the dark barbarism affecting the people of Sarajevo. Rock anthems from the 1960s were used as part of the soundtracks in such Vietnam War-era movies as Apocalypse Now and Platoon. The anthems used in Welcome to Sarajevo were popular closer to the era of the film.
Welcome to Sarajevo (1997)
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Emira Nušević, Kerry Fox, Goran Višnjić, James Nesbitt, Emily Lloyd, Juliet Aubrey, Gordana Gadzic
Screenplay by: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Production Design by: Mark Geraghty, Kemal Hrustanovic
Cinematography by: Daf Hobson
Film Editing by: Trevor Waite
Costume Design by: Janty Yates
Set Decoration by: Constantin Nikolic
Art Direction by: Kemal Hrustanovic, David Minty, Terry Pritchard
Music by: Adrian Johnston
MPAA Rating: R for brutal images / war atrocities and language.
Distributed by: Miramax Films (United States), Warner Bros. Pictures (International)
Release Date: November 6, 1997
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