As If I Am Not There

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Juanita Wilson, Irish producer turned writer-director, delivers this fascinating depiction of the instinct for survival, and what a human being is prepared to do to ensure it, in her feature debut.

Set in 1992 just as Bosnia is plunged into war with her neighbours, a young Muslim teacher, Samira (Petrovic), leaves Sarajevo and her family for a job as a schoolmistress in a remote village to replace the previous schoolteacher who has mysteriously disappeared. Before she has a chance to settle in, however, soldiers arrive and force the men of the village into a field where they are shot. The women and children are moved to an abandoned airfield where the prettier, younger women (one of them a girl of about twelve) are used for the sexual gratification of the bored, drunken soldiers. Enduring a horrific series of beatings and rapes, Samira prepares herself mentally to survive her ordeal.

Based on Croatian Slavenka Drakulic's novel, As If I Am Not There is a haunting and difficult experience. Wilson, on the back of her Oscar-nominated short The Door, handles the proceedings with care, wary not to get bogged down in the politics of the war - instead she focuses on one woman's story and this woman has a story to tell. Wilson's unhurried direction slowly builds a mood of constant fear and apprehension and her framing allows the doleful eyes of the pretty Petrovic say more than the dialogue ever could.

The near-mute performance from Petrovic is perfect: quiet and elegant, her portrayal of a woman refusing to let what is happening invade her soul but still manages to stay this side of total detachment, and with it mentally shutdown, is wonderful to watch (she insists on using make up to keep whatever dignity she has left: "It's not for them, it's for me"). It's a netherworld of emotion that is tough to pull off but Petrovic, in only her second film, delivers easily.

Wilson shoots the difficult rape scenes from Samira's point of view (and not like the observing nature of Irreversible), so when she imagines herself away from the moment (like her fixation on the fly on the wall or her out of body experience), the audience are obliged to join her. That still doesn't stop the scenes from been probably the most harrowing you'll see this year.