“The grand prize winner of the International Critics Week at Cannes. . . . Humanely wrought and sensitively rendered by Begic and her excellent cast, Snow is a work of rare modesty and poignancy” (Jason Anderson, eye Weekly).
It is 1997, two short years after the end of the bitter internecine conflict that ripped apart Yugoslavia. We find ourselves in the eastern Bosnian village of Slavno, where the survivors of the conflict are struggling to reassemble their lives. The village is populated almost entirely by women and children, either orphans or fatherless. All of them struggle to get by, pushing carts up the local hills to the highway in vain attempts to sell goods and make some money. Everything changes when a couple of men, Serbs, turn up and offer to buy their various properties to develop into hotels and a resort.
Aida Begic’s extraordinary and penetrating study of this post-war society resonates on many levels, but above all it is a wonderful testament to the resilience of the human spirit – witnessed mostly through the eyes of three generations of women.
– Dimitri Eipides, 2008 Toronto International Film Festival Programme Book
Rated 14A.
