Sometimes a World Torn Apart.

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 2003)

Shocking Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001 as this stole the Academy Award from the vastly popular French picture "Amelie". Excellent in most every way, "No Man's Land" is from Bosnia-Herzegovina and tells the story of the most intense fighting over there between the Bosnians and the Serbians. In 1993 a group of Bosnians get ambushed one dark, cold and foggy night and it appears that the entire group is dead. That is not the case though. Two have actually survived. One (Filip Sovagovic) was knocked out so severely that he appeared dead and a Serbian has put a land mine underneath his thought-to-be deceased body. The other (Branko Dujuric) is hiding and trying to find a way out of the trench. Soon the two Bosnians and green-Serb Rene Bitorajac are caught together in the trench, right between the two battling armies. Death is almost certain for all three as Sovagonic cannot move from the mine and the other two risk being killed if they to climb away. The United Nations Peace Army tries to find a way to get all three out, but inefficiency runs amok and it appears that the trio may never get out of the hot zone alive. A crazed media (that is apparently found all over the world) just adds to the heated situation with their usual exploitation antics. "No Man's Land" was quietly ignored for most of 2001, but hit fire at the right time mainly due to the critics saving the movie from obscurity. This is a rather simple film about very complex situations. Writer/director Danis Tanovic crafts a movie that teaches a somewhat ignorant world about some very terrible times in his native homeland (fighting continues almost non-stop over there it seems). The Bosnians and Serbians only seem to be separated by uniforms and different ideals. Failed diplomacy and war-like antics continue to dominate that part of the planet unfortunately. Thought-provoking, darkly funny, intense, smart and very intelligent, "No Man's Land" is one of the better foreign language pictures of recent memory. 5 stars out of 5.