Both Dillane and Harrelson deserve Oscar consideration, though the true genius behind Welcome to Sarajevo is Winterbottom. The result is crisp, brutal, and utterly inspirational. Once was Yugoslavia British director Michael Winterbottom sat sock-footed and relaxed as he readied himself to screen his ambitious Welcome to Sarajevo at this past September's Boston Film Festival. Certainly, I figured, the comforts of a first-class hotel in Boston must seem worlds away from the war torn ravages of Sarajevo. For me, going to Sarajevo was not that dissimilar from being in London, New York, or Boston.
People listen to the same music.
It's a big university town. It's a very modern, sophisticated European city. They are all there trying to get the story. Winterbottom opines that even though reporters worked arduously to relay news of the heinous war crimes around the globe, the West was slow, almost complacent, in reacting. During the war, many of the people in Britain viewed it as the Balkans, where all these weird people were always fighting each other in ethnic struggles that had been going on for hundreds of years.