Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

ridiculous rating

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Juanita Wilson's As If I Am Not There is a powerful film, depicting the realities faced by Bosniaks during the Bosnian War. The film does not shy away from the brutal realities of mass murder and rape experienced in the war or from how the camp experience never leaves the survivors after liberation.While encamped, there is a rumor among the women that a men's camp is nearby; however, this is not the case. As seen at the film's start, the men of the village were slaughtered, and this gendercide of military-aged men was widespread during the war; there would not have been an equivalent men's camp to camps for the women and children as the fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers of these women and children would have been murdered by the Serbian soldiers. As for the rapes that occur inside of Samira's camp, these were, unfortunately, commonplace in camps during the Bosnian War. The film does well in showing how these women were abused at the hands of their Serbian captors as even children were not exempt from the sexual horrors of the camps. Some viewers might oppose the relationship between Samira and the captain, but it is important to acknowledge that their relationship could not have been consensual as it is impossible for a captor and an encamped person to have a consensual relationship inside of a camp. The captain still has complete control over Samira, and she engages in survival sex to better her own situation in the camp for which people who have never experienced encampment cannot judge her.This film also did an great job at demonstrating the aftereffects of the camp as it did not stop at the joyous point of liberation. As result of her experience in the rape camp, Samira was left pregnant with a child and seeks out an abortion too far along in the pregnancy, being forced to carry the child full-term. It is evident how affected she is by her camp experience as she struggles to connect with her child, sobbing as she breastfeeds her newborn. The camp experience never ends for survivors; the horrors experienced in a camp will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

As If I Am Not There is a film that explores a very harsh reality through one woman's experience in a camp for Bosniak Muslim women. The film greatly succeeds in allowing the audience to better understand and feel the same emotions that these women felt. The director, Juanita Wilson, utilizes her cinematographer and her editor wonderfully as the shots primarily take the place for the almost haunting lack of dialogue. The film features primarily close ups and medium shots of small, tight interiors. When there is an occasional long shot, the background is frequently blurred, especially blurring out the soldiers. This simulates how the protagonist, Samira, felt during her time. The cinematography creates a feeling of anxiety, unawareness, and tension. These women had no concept of the outside world. These camps temporarily became their world. All they knew was what surrounded them. There was no available information about the war, nor how long they would reside there. Any information they could obtain was through rumors that oftentimes proved false. There is a scene in particular that I would like to highlight. In the beginning of the film, there is a long, extended shot of the women reacting to the men being executed in their village. The director deliberately chose to show each and every male walking out of the building, as the women watched through the window. This scene depicting the women's reactions lasted through the entirety of the men being killed. Every bullet was heard, and the scene was not finished until every male had died from each bullet. In any other film, the director or editor would have chosen to cut early as we understand what is happening, and forcing the audience to wait through this entire sequence is unnecessary and repetitive. But Wilson has a message here. That every single bullet took an individual life. We see the wives and mothers react to their husbands and sons being killed, and yes, it is emotional. But knowing that every gunshot heard took a life is greatly impactful. Not showing the execution further allows the audience to be placed within the women's experience. The gunshots heard last for a very long time with great lengths of time between sets of gunshots. These pauses create a slimmer of hope for both the audience and the women that perhaps their loved ones made it out alive by running or resisting. But by the end of the sounds, it is clear that they are all dead. The film features many shots such as this that, although small, create a great impact on placing the audience within the experience itself.

Juanita Wilson depicts female experiences during the Bosnian War in her film As If I'm Not There. The main character, Samira, is a composite of women's ordeals in camps during the war. The film includes graphic depictions of rape, violence, and survival. Wilson made the choice to have minimal dialogue, which forces the audience to focus on dramatized light and sound. These sensory details in addition to Samira's sober facial expressions set the tone for each scene. Many of Samira's experiences reflect the experience of camp survivors. For instance, Samira's yearning for her pre-war life is depicted by her characterizing home as she soothes the dying schoolgirl who has been gang raped and brutalized for the last time to bed. Samira also asks the captain towards the end of the film if she gets to go home, as if her once home still exists. Another example is Samira's struggle to retain her identity. She claims she puts on makeup and dresses herself well because it's who she is. She also identifies as a teacher from Sarajevo to the Captain. The film also depicts camp life with a fair amount of accuracy. The temporary nature of camp circumstances leads to gossip and rumors. The interruption of childhood innocence is depicted by a schoolgirl being distracted by a butterfly. The schoolgirl claims it's not dangerous to her mother. The fragmentation of guards is portrayed through the captain who is manipulating and raping Samira, yet has an eight-year-old son. The inescapable nature of camp experience is symbolized by Samira accepting the child, who is the result of repeated rapes during her time in the camp.

Incredible Movie claims that the movie doesn't lay blame on any side in the war and that women were raped on all sides. This is ludicrous because it's obvious that Bosniak women in the movie were violated by the Serb militants. International commissions have established that most of the 12,000-50,000 women raped between 1992 and 1995 were Bosniak as a way of genocide by other means. The rapes of Serbian and Croatian women, as horrible as they are, occurred as instances of war crimes, not as part of Bosniaks' genocidal program of genetic transformation and intimidation.Anyone interested in the facts of the rape issue in BiH should consult Wikipedia's article on the subject.