Silenced Women and Victims on Film: Addressing the Failure of Legal Interventions in Contemporary Yugoslav Cinema

• In Event: Yugoslav Responsibility I: Disjunction and the Presence of War in (Post)Yugoslav Culture

Abstract

Following the extensive violence of the 1990s, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) were tasked with bringing about justice and reconciliation. While the TRC would end up inconclusive after just two years of operating, the ICTY would ultimately fail to create a shared sense of truth or combat the rampant denialism that defines the post-war memory politics of the region. While localized legal invention has successfully tried more perpetrators, the search for justice at the local level faces its own unique limitations when it comes to the colossal task of providing a lasting peace. This context is the background for a paper that analyzes how contemporary Yugoslav cinema portrays female witnesses, victims, and survivors interactions with legal and social structures. In particular, I center Jasmila Žbanić’s For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (Za one koji ne mogu da govore, 2011), Mirjana Karanović’s A Good Wife (Dobra žena, 2016), and Hans-Christian Schmid’s Storm (2009). These films share depictions of women interacting with the post-war authoritative apparatus and striving for recognition for their suffering or the suffering of others. I argue that these films show how legal intervention’s inability to fully address the past extends to a silencing of women’s own experiences of war, as well as a refusal of states to provide redress to their victims. In doing so, this paper centers how bureaucracy and legal proceedings not only silence victims but hamper the search for justice.

Author

• Katie Kasperian, U of Michigan