A convincing portrait of how ordinary people strive to get on with their lives in the wake of terrible conflict.
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02/17/07
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams (2007)
98
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:42
Fresh:41
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: An emotionally blunt and gripping drama, Grbavica deftly explores the emotional toll that all wars take upon those who survive them.
Theatrical Release:15-12-2006
Synopsis: Single mother Esma lives with her 12-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo’s Grbavica neighborhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the 1990s Yugoslav wars. Unable to make ends meet... [More]
Reviews for Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
Top CriticClick to read the article
08/11/07
Top CriticThe portrayal of a wounded society is compelling, and the film ends on a very modestly hopeful note, appropriate for a country where the 'dreams' have been mostly painful.
03/30/07
Zbanic's deeply personal saga allows us to see the savage price that women paid in the Balkan wars.
02/20/07
This is a slice of Bosnian life, a powerful peek at average people trying to live their average lives despite the extraordinary and unthinkable things that lie in their past.
05/04/07
Jasmila Zbanic also deserves our admiration for casting Karanovic, and for making a film of great power about the fate of that ultimate contradiction -- a child born out of hatred.
04/09/07
A poignant and emotionally gripping story of a Bosnian single parent struggling to survive in Sarajevo and carrying deep physical and spiritual wounds from the 1990s wars.
02/25/07
Lovely in its understatement, quietly but insistently demanding that Esma's story, and those of too many other women, finally be told.
05/02/07
The admirable feminist agenda occasionally trips up the narrative, but the film's performances keep it on track.
03/09/07
The aftermath of the Bosnian civil war is a rich vein of storytelling material and newcomer writer/director Zbanic mines it well.
03/03/07
...a little powerhouse of a movie whose slow gentle build reaches quite a stunning conclusion.
03/10/07
A striking treatise on life in post-war Bosina every bit as stark and weighty as the Italian master's [Vittorio De Sica] meditations on life in the heart and the aftermath of the madness of war.
02/16/07
Grbavica increases in power as it progresses. It's a movie about the ways in which people yearn for healing and about the many obstacles that work to prevent it.
05/18/07
Years after the near total destruction of Sarajevo, life in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina goes on. But for some, like the survivor at the center of Jasmila Zabnic's shattering debut feature, there's no escaping the ghosts of a violent past.
02/16/07
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams is a stilted but touching articulation of a Sarajevo suburb's collective grief years after the Bosnian War.
01/28/07
The kind of well-meaning film that actually gives well-meaning films a good name.
04/11/07
Grbavica shows that even as you leave a war behind, you bring it with you.
02/16/07
Top CriticZbanic and cinematographer Christine Maier shoot naturally so as to capture the sense of a fake and often failed veil of normalcy drawn over too many horrible secrets.
10/30/06
Top CriticA young Bosnian woman learns that her dad is not the heroshe thought he was in a dramatic postwar family drama in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
02/09/07
Recognizing that Zbanic had flattered only her characters and not me, I decided this young filmmaker might be allowed room to grow, despite her awards.
02/17/07
Latest News for Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
May 12, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review 
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