Sarajevo on film 1997 Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Perfect Circle (Savršeni krug)
A film about besieged Sarajevo made by a man who stayed in it — Kenović's camera knows the city's streets the way only a resident's does.
- Director
- Ademir Kenović
- Year
- 1997
- Language
- Bosnian
- Country
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Genre
- war, drama
Most films about the siege of Sarajevo were made after it, by crews who flew in once the shooting stopped. The Perfect Circle (Savršeni krug) is the exception: it was made by a director who stayed. Ademir Kenović lived through the siege, and the film’s great advantage is that its city is not a set. The streets are the real streets; the damage is the real damage; the people in the margins are the actual population of a city under fire.
The plot is small and classical. Hamza, an alcoholic poet, finds two children wandering alone after their mother is killed by a shell. He takes them in and tries, in the closing months of the siege, to keep them alive and get them out. The title comes from a circle of life the poet believes must close — the story of his own lost family looping back through the two orphans. It is a film about the domestic core of the siege: not the politics, but the ordinary act of keeping children fed, warm, and sane while the city burns around them.
It is also, unusually for the period, a film about the city’s Muslim character without making it a statement. The poet’s faith is present the way it was present in wartime Sarajevo — as part of the furniture of daily life, not a plot point. Kenović, who stayed and made films about his own city, earned the right to that restraint.
Watch it alongside the Sarajevo Roses — the red-resin memorials in the pavement marking where mortars killed people — and you get the two registers of the siege in one visit: the memorials are the record; The Perfect Circle is the lived texture. Both are best taken slowly.
Critical reception
The film won the François Chalais Prize at Cannes in 1997, the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix, and a FIPRESCI Prize at Valladolid. Variety’s Emanuel Levy reviewed it warmly, praising its compassion.
Public reception and legacy
The Perfect Circle holds a singular place: it is described as the first Bosnian feature released after the 1992 independence referendum — “in some sense the first Bosnian film”. Its production is part of the story: filming was due to begin in spring 1992, the siege began first, and Kenović and his co-writers reworked the screenplay while sheltering in the Holiday Inn; filming finally started in 1996, with UN permission. At Cannes 1997 it won the François Chalais Prize.
What the critics said
“a compassionate tale with poetic touches about the relationship between a poet and two orphaned children during the Bosnian war.”Read the review →