No Man's Land
Tags: comedy, murder, anti war, violence, thought-provoking, satire, tragedy, suspenseful, sentimental

Plot synopsis:
Two wounded soldiers are caught between their lines in no man's land, in a struggle for survival. Ciki is a Bosnian Muslim, and Nino is a Bosnian Serb. The two soldiers confront each other in a trench, where they wait for dark. They trade insults and even find some common ground. Confounding the situation is Cera, a wounded Bosniak soldier who wakes from unconsciousness. A land mine had been buried beneath him by the Bosnian Serbs; should he make any move, it would be fatal.Marchand, a French sergeant of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), gets involved in effort to help the three trapped soldiers, despite initial orders to the contrary by high command. UNPROFOR's mission in Bosnia was to guard the humanitarian aid convoys, to remain neutral and act as a mere bystander.An English reporter arrives on scene, bringing media pressure to bear that moves the United Nations high command to swing in to action to try to save the soldiers.A row between the stressed out and fatigued Ciki and Nino gradually escalates even after being rescued. Eventually, Ciki shoots Nino and is in turn shot by a peacekeeper. After this confrontation, it is found that the mine cannot be defused. The UNPROFOR high command tries to save face: they lie, saying that Cera has been saved and they leave the area, along with the reporters and everyone else. In reality, Cera is left alone and desolate in the trenches, still immobilized by the mine.source:Wiki

Review: I'm glad the IMDb featured this flick as its movie of the day, it is a great film and one which I think a lot of people passed over because it has...
I saw this early this morning at the a film festival in Gotemburg.The director was there and all.It´s a very frightening anti-war film that has three main characters two of them are Bosnian´s and one of them is a Serb.They are soldiers but also normal men.And war makes hate.This is a very symbolic film I would call a masterpiece.Those three persons  together shows what war is:HELL.The director Danis Tanovic himself says that it´s of course about just this war but it´s not like if you see this film in ten years you wont understand it.During their time on no man´s land they are civil to each other but the conflict continues and in the end that´s what is most important.The final scene of the film is superb.A film that  will go to film history.Worth to see by everyone.5/5.
No Man's Land involves three soldiers  two Bosnians and one Serb  trapped in a trench between the two fronts.
I'm really really glad that this No Man's Land won the Academy Award for best foreign language film over that dreadfully over-hyped 'Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain'.
What makes this film worth more that one watch is that it takes human life at its most vulnerable, that it is about communication or lack of thereof, the excellent use of international cast and different languages adding to the confusion of an understanding the conflict that was truly not understood by anyone..
However, this film is just as sad and emotionally provoking like any other outstanding anti-war movie.
The poor soldier replied 'Of course I am OK, I got shot, and then I was unconscious, and then woke up and found there is a landmine beneath me, and then the whole world is watching me, and then I want to go to toilet, and now I was greeted by rubbish statements from my friend'.I hope this film would make people understand that wars are completely vile and barbaric, and no one would start a war again..
The three major protagonists, two Bosnians and a Serb, are thrown together in a terrible situation, out of which it will be difficult to escape unscathed.In addition to the warring factions, outside influences enter the picture in the form of a TV news reporter, and members of the UN forces in the  region.
It's made with uninformed and generally disinterested Western audience in mind and it's as if Tanovic is saying: "Look, I know it's a drag to go out and look for serious material on ethnic groups you've barely heard of, fighting over a godforsaken piece of land you probably can't pick out on the map, so here's a condensed & simplified version that will make you think you now understand what went on in Bosnia during the early 1990s." With his way too broad a brush he attempts many things.
Among them: touching on the seeds of conflict between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims (who now days prefer to be called Bosniacks and in this movie are referred to as Bosnians), explaining the role of international community through UN's UNPROFOR contingent,conveying the hopelessness and chaos of war, etc, etc..
I didn't exactly expect Tanovic, himself a Muslim and a soldier in the Bosnian Muslim Army during the war, to entirely stay clear of this, but even so, I thought he'd concentrate more on human stories and less on scoring points for his side.
His thinly veiled position seems to be that the international community should have taken the Muslim side in Bosnia by helping them (not only in humanitarian aid, but in arms, too) fight the other two, better equipped sides (Croats were in this civil war as well, though the movie makes no mention of them).
Tanovic again lets his emotions get the better of him and goes way over the top by portraying most of the official foreign element in Bosnia somewhere in the range between incompetent, clueless retards and amoral (bordering on sinister) worms.I mention all this due to the fact that this film is being marketed as another "Catch-22" - supposedly showing all of the absurdity and senslesness of war.
And while it does that in certain part, it is also much more of a soapbox for Tanovic to air his, obviously subjective, views on a conflict he took an active part in."No Man's Land" possesses certain redeemable value but tries to be too many things at the same time, many of which ultimately dilute and diminish its anti-war message.
The movie talks upon three soldiers , one Serbian and two Bosnian who are trapped in a trench amidst the contenders lines during Servia-Bosnia Herzegovina war in 1993 , at the time of the heaviest fighting between the two warring sides .
`No Man's Land' is another excellent movie about the Bosnian war, inclusive an Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001, and highly recommended for any audience.
Having written a script in 1996 called SOLITUDE set in Bosnia in the early 1990s I`ve been interested in seeing how the Balkans conflict is featured in movies and I was really looking forward to seeing NO MANS LAND a multi national production that became the first movie featuring the Balkans conflict to win an Oscar .
There`s also a scene early in the movie that steals directly from PLATOON with a hardened veteran going through a raw recruits kit saying " You don`t need that , dump this ..." so my hopes were built up that this was going to be a compelling piece of cinema but when the movie concentrates on the story proper of having two men ( Or three depending how you look at it ) in a trench it doesn`t really go anywhere , instead it just concentrates on insults like :" You started this war you Serb pig " " No you started this war you Muslim dog " There`s little information on the history of the Bosnian civil war to be gathered from from these exchanges , there`s little drama to these exchanges and to be blunt when watching NO MANS LAND it doesn`t actually feel like you`re experiencing cinema since you could easily adapt this screenplay for the stage with very little modification .
Another thing was I couldn`t believe in the characters as anything more than litery devices , Simon Callow`s caricture as a UN Protection Force officer especially bordered on the offensive with the only performance and role that anyway resembled a real person being the late Katrin Cartlidge as Jane Livingstone , a journalist who seems to be implicitly based on The Guardian`s Maggie O`Kane NO MANS LAND isn`t the worst movie to have used the Balkans conflict as a backdrop , that unwanted accolade must surely go to BEHIND ENEMY LINES but it`s far from being the best either , in my humble opinion  PRETTY VILLAGE , PRETTY FLAME is the clear winner.
This Serbo-Croatian film (with English subtitles) was a somewhat interesting story of a couple of soldiers on opposite sides in the Bosnian war who wind up in the same trench (hence, "No Man's Land") and the United Nations officials who try to rescue them.
The film is telling the dramatic story of three soldiers (one Serb and two Bosnians) caught between two front-lines during the Yugoslavian war.
Some UN troop try to free them but their very bureaucratic hierarchy prevents them of doing so and they require the help of a British journalist.The plot is very credible and shows perfectly the absurdity and cruelty of war and the influence of the TV press on the battlefield.But I would not qualify this film as a masterpiece.
This is the merit of `No Man's Land', a movie about a group of Bosnians and Serbs stuck in a no man's land trench under the fire of both armies, a parable of the deadly stalemate that marked this war.
The first is the fact that the movie's main conflict, between the Bosnian Chiki and the Serb Nino, is not entirely convincing (it is even childish sometimes) and therefore is not up to the hatred and grievances that oppose the two nations.
That's why the tragic way this conflict finally unfolds seems a bit out of proportion with the story, as if artificially conceived in order to neutralize some satirical and farcical aspects of the movie that are at odds with the gravity of the war itself.
As a rule, there is no effort to explain the causes of the conflict (good, it's a movie, not a dissertation), but Tanovic's screenplay attributes to the United Nations peacekeeping mission a good deal of responsibility for the absurd continuation of the war, which is nonsense.
It shows the war from it's truthfully side.The movie is made in a typical Bosnian way that always includes comedy.
Tanovic works with symbols, like the very last picture of the movie, where you see this Bosnian soldier lying on a land mine not being able to either move or stay there.
It is still a "No Man's Land".It is a funny way to understand the ironic war in Bosnia.
"No Man's Land" is a satirical representation of the futility of the Bosnian/Serb conflict which uses one incident, a living man in a trench booby-trapped with a land mine, to show how the people involved, from foot soldiers to media to UN peace-keepeers to the chain of command, all fail to succeed when hatreds run deep.
I have to think back to the Civil War in America, where I had cousins fighting on both sides to see the utter ignorance that war is all about.Two soldiers, actually three, but he was thought to be dead, end up in a trench in the middle of the Bosnian-Serbian war.
I'm not sure that was because it was the best choice or because the film touch the current nerve in Hollywood.Basically its the story of three men fighting, literally in the trenches of Bosnia.
First time featue film writer/director/composer Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land is a great example of a war satire, though it is so realistic it shimmers on the edge of reality and fiction to the point where you just sit back in a form of awe.
This causes a conflict with the men having to wait on the UN to get them out, and to help out Djuric's best friend (played with heartbreaking accuracy by Sovagovic) who is on a land mine that will explode if he moves off it.A tad cliched, but when it's a satire, it might need to be a little cliched, especially with a war movie.
Still, Tanovic has created a film that breaks a lot of the boundaries of many war movies and in it has made a remarkable work.
Danis Tanovic's film 'No Man´s Land' is a realistic portrayal of a war scenario, with all its absurdity and uselessness.
However, No Man's Land stands out as a warmovie that is objective, non-judgmental and immensely thought-provoking.The fact that non of the actors are international movie stars heightens therealism and allows the audience to view their plight with more objectivity.(Sometimes, a movie star's off-screen persona can be too distracting.)Ciki (a Bosnian) and Nino (a Serb) get stuck in no man's land together, and we see the futility in pointing fingers when amidst heavy bombing around them,they argue that it is the other who started the war.
No Man's Land offers an excellent metaphor for the situation that leads to war: there is a man in the film who is lying on top of a mine that will destroy everything in the area if his weight is removed.
The best foreign language film that tells truth, through symbolics about war in Bosnia.
No Man's Land is a great, amazing and fascinating black-humor war movie I have ever watched.
It still manages to show the horror of war and the pointlessness of the whole situation.It perfectly shows the involvement of both the Serbians and the Bosnians that are not really caring about the faith of the soldiers trapped in the trench in the middle of no man's land, while all they do in the trench is arguing about who's to blame for starting the war in the first place which takes a lot of pressure and tension with it.
All is shown in a satirical way and basically it just tells the story of the whole war and the parties involved in 98 minutes.Not sure about it deserving of winning the Oscar for best foreign film but still an enjoyable light war drama.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
A story about two soldiers in a trench between enemy lines during the Bosnian war.
No heroes, except perhaps the unfortunate Marchand, who risks death and his career to try to save the three fighters caught between Bosnian and Serbian front lines against overwhelming odds.No Man's Land shows the absurdity of war very skilfully.
A Dynamic Film About War. This movie was made by a Bosnian director and blames the Serbians for starting the war and acting as the aggressors.
This contrast between the characters serves a purpose aside from making Bosnia look good; it gives them things to talk and argue about, contributing to the chemistry and banter they develop throughout the film.This movie doesn't glorify any aspect of the military or warfare.
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.
An early interchange between the two key soldiers as to which side started the war illuminates, briefly but effectively, the fog that literally, not merely figuratively, engulfs the Balkans.The most brilliant aspect of this fine film is the encapsulation of the wildly changing emotions of the two antagonists who share a desire to survive while trapped in a trench between the opposing forces.
Full credit to Tanovic for presenting us a magnificient story, superb direction and most important, the message the film carries.What war actually is, we the common people who stay away, cannot understand.
This is an excellent movie, one of the best I've seen on the subject of the Bosnian-Serbian war.
No Man's Land is a sad, funny, thought provoking and satirical drama about a complicated situation that develops in a trench during the Serbian/Croatian war over Bosnia in the 90's.
No Man's Land takes a cynical look at the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993; the war between the Serbs and the Croats.Cynical...
The absolute futility of war and colonialism/imperialism is summed up by a repeated line: "I say that it's true because I have a gun and you don't." Not to mention what happens when UNPROFOR gets involved and the media starts covering it.Without a doubt, "Ničija zemlja" (the title in Bosnian) doesn't paint a pretty picture of international affairs: aside from the genocide itself, there was the helplessness of the foreign governments to do anything about it, and the "human interest story" approach that the press took, much like in Rwanda (which one character mentions).
This film is shoot ed in a valley which is a no man's land between Serbian and Bosnian trenches.
But justice did prevail(at least in real life), as this little known anti-war tragi-comedy quietly usurped the honors of 2001's best Foreign language film from the more obvious audience favourite, Amelie.Without condescension or preaching, No Man's Land conveyed clear messages on humanity, the absurdity of war and the tragic repercussions of idealogical differences.
The story is centered around three soldiers, one serb and two bosnians, who get caught up together in a trench in no man's land between the two fighting sides.
To complicate matters, one of the bosnian soldiers is lying on top of a bouncing mine and cannot be moved without it exploding.The movie won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, in my opinion a great choice.
At times this is a pretty lighthearted story with a lot of short lines and situations that make you laugh, but in the end, the feeling we are left with is still that war is never funny and is always meaningless.I loved the portrayal of the U.N and their inability to really make a difference, overall the acting was good, and the camera and scenery makes this film great to see..
It's about 2 men, a Bosnian and a Serb, finding themselves in a trench in the middle of no man's land during the Bosnian War and have got no real idea why they're angry enough to fight each other.
It shows the media bringing the worlds attention to the war and the inaction of the UN, but it also shows the personal interest involved.In conclusion, if you want a balanced well rounded view of the Bosnian conflict this is the movie for you.
No Man's Land is an extremely social film about the absurdity of war and the lack of humanity that surrounds it.
No Man's Land won the best foreign language film at the 2001 Academy awards.
I advice every one see this post don't skip the film just because it's Serbo-Croatian, No Man's Land is a great, amazing and fascinating black-humor war movie, It talks about two soldiers from different sides (Serbian and Bosnian), and their struggling for each country.What I liked the most is that DANIS TANOVIC, who is Bosnian director, did not refer positively on his homeland, you can see the balance between those two sides.
People who understand this symbolic film, they will see and discover the real picture of suffering and agony in this 4-year war against Bosnia.
People who understand this symbolic film, they will see and discover the real picture of suffering and agony in this 4-year war against Bosnia.