Kako sam zapalio Simona Bolivara

Black humour and home movies: through his masterly editing of video footage taken by his father at the time the Bosnian war broke out, Igor Drljaca recounts the incongruous eruption of History in his childhood years. “Paint the arrival of spring” – the art teacher’s assignment sparked his fear of getting a poor grade. And for once, his wish for the school to burn down almost came true one spring day in 1992. Viewed through a narrow lens, this narrative thirty years on of course underlines the traumatic gap between the uneventful existence of a schoolboy with his worries and the incommensurable violence of war. But in the snippets of his family life, the child’s candour takes a more complex turn: wasn’t it the narrator himself, barely older than his six-year-old brother, who persuaded his sibling that the noise of shelling came from fireworks? The very composed tone of the commentary finally produces a profound unease: childhood’s magical thinking is perhaps not so absurd when compared to the unquestionable absurdity of recent History.