Sarajevo on film 2023 Bosnia and Herzegovina
Excursion (Ekskurzija)
A schoolgirl's small lie spirals into a city-wide rumour in contemporary Sarajevo — Bosnia's Oscar entry, from a director born after the war.
- Director
- Una Gunjak
- Year
- 2023
- Language
- Bosnian
- Country
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Genre
- drama
Excursion (Ekskurzija) is the film of contemporary Sarajevo — the city after the war films, told by a director who was born after the war ended. Una Gunjak’s feature debut follows a teenage girl in the city whose small lie — an invention about a class trip — grows into a rumour she can no longer control, with consequences that ripple through her school and her neighbourhood. It is a coming-of-age story set in the everyday streets of the city: the schoolyards, the cafés, the apartment blocks where a generation of war children is now grown.
The film was Bosnia and Herzegovina’s official entry for the 96th Academy Awards and had its world premiere at the 76th Locarno Film Festival in 2023, where it received a Special Mention. It is a six-country co-production — Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, France, Norway and Qatar — a reminder of how international the country’s cinema has become.
For a visitor, it is the film that shows Sarajevo as a present-tense, ordinary place: not the bazaar of the postcards and not the memorial of the war, but a European city of teenagers, rumours and school trips, thirty years on from the siege. Watch it to see the city the post-war generation actually lives in.
Critical reception
Excursion had its world premiere in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present competition in 2023, where it won a Special Mention, before being selected as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entry for the 96th Academy Awards. Festival notices centred on Gunjak’s handling of her young cast.
Public reception and legacy
At home the film was the top-grossing domestic release of 2023: 6,351 viewers in Bosnian cinemas, more than half the box office of every majority-Bosnian film released that year combined — a measure of how much Bosnian cinema still depends on festivals and co-production rather than its own market. It also won the Grand Prix at the Bihać Avant & Una festival and best screenplay and actress prizes at the Montenegro Film Festival.
What the critics said
“Gunjak's talent lies in her handling of the youthful ensemble”Read the review →
Portrait: Bernhard Holub · CC BY-SA 4.0