SERBIA: A crowd showed up in early March for the Belgrade debut of Grbavica, a film about a Muslim woman who is raped by a Serb during Bosnia's ethnic war of the 1990s and her decision to keep the daughter to whom she gives birth.
Before the projector began rolling, Serbs, who don't acknowledge that such crimes were committed, much less that they should be the subject of a film screened in the Serbian capital, yelled "Traitors", before being ejected from the hall.
"That was expected, but we have to confront all this," said Mirjana Karanovic, the actress who plays the mother.
Perhaps more than anybody else involved, Karanovic is at the centre of controversy. She is Serbia's best- known film actor and much admired.
It was unthinkable for a Serb to play the victim of Serbs in a country where many people, if not hostile to the idea that there were wartime atrocities, at least think the blame should be spread to all nationalities. Karanovic had no second thoughts.
"There was no reluctance. I knew such rapes happened. Maybe not the details, but I knew it was true," she said. "This film tells the story. It applies to everyone."
Grbavica is a district of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, once a mixed city of Serbs, Muslims and Croats. It was badly battered during the 3½-year siege of the city, where the Serbs worked to drive out Muslims and Croats.
Serb irregular forces occupied, then looted and raped, in Grbavica. More than a decade later, Sarajevo remains largely segregated, with Serbs settling outside in an area known as new Sarajevo and Muslims dominating the city proper.
"The Sarajevo that was before the war will never exist again," Karanovic said. "We didn't think so much in terms of nationality.
"When people ask me what it's like to play a Muslim woman, I tell them being a Muslim was not so much a part of life of Bosnia as it is becoming. We Serbs and Muslims are similar to each other, no matter what people say. I didn't have to transform my whole personality."
The ethnic divisions of today's Sarajevo made the multicultural production of Grbavica all the more notable. Shot in Sarajevo, it is a joint Austrian, Bosnian, German and Croatian creation. Director Jasmila Zbanic is a young Bosnian documentary filmmaker.
In February it won the Golden Bear award for best film at the Berlin Film Festival. Zbanic made news at the festival when she appealed for the capture of fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. That dashed whatever chance the film had to play in Serb-dominated parts of Bosnia. But it showed in theatres in Sarajevo and other Muslim and Croat parts of the country.
In Belgrade, human rights and democracy advocates made up the audience and greeted the film with a standing ovation.
It tells the story of a medical student who is raped in her home and becomes pregnant.
"When I gave birth to her, I didn't want to see her," says Karanovic's character, Esma, "but on the second day, when I took her to my breast, I realised that she was the only beauty remaining in this world and so I kept her."
Karanovic prepared for the part by reading war crimes testimony from victims. Few women stepped forward to tell their stories. "It is a shame in society, they are not recognised as victims."
After the film's debut in Sarajevo, the Bosnian parliament voted to recognise raped women as war victims and provide them with financial help. The film is to open soon in Belgrade. Karanovic thinks it will be received peacefully.
"We Serbs are in a crisis of spirit. We don't know who our heroes are and who are the villains. In Serbia, we are not yet ready to tell the story ourselves," she said.
"People will see the movie and talk about it. That would be progress. We have to move in small steps."