An interview with Miruna Vlada about “Bosnia. Separation”
“I spoke Bosnian more with my hands than with my mouth, but I met amazing people in the bus, in the train, in the pubs. The cliché of the “Bal-kan”, the “blood and honey” realities of Bosnia confirmed in my case, too. Beyond the nice faces I also perceived a lot of symbolic violence in people’s everyday interactions, coming at the same time with their warmth and hospitality. The industry of war story-telling, if I can call like that, began to frighten me from the beginning, so I tried to avoid in discussions any topic that would lead to that. I tried to reach people with very different backgrounds, people who travelled the world and people who never left Bosnia. I was moved by the unexpected beautiful and simple stories of people with no political agenda, and no desire to impress someone, people with a bitter sense of humour and harsh self-criticism. But one thing is for sure – part of the homey feeling that I had in Bosnia are its people. My impression was that the main tension of a divorce is in the silence, not in the screaming. In Bosnia I felt that many of the untold stories are more painful than the bullet holes. The new map, the new borders, the new life and the unspoken words of redefining territories, on paper, with flesh and blood. These are the main characters I wanted to focus on. And this is something beyond any rhetoric”.
To read the full interview click HERE .
Interview by Adisa Basic, a writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina.