Berlinale 2025: Ceasefire (dir. Jakob Krese) | Review
In Ceasefire, Jakob Krese bears witness to a life suspended, where past wounds refuse to fade.
In the Srebrenica region, in July 1995, amid the civil war that would ultimately lead to the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, eight thousand (8,000) Bosniak Muslim men were executed by Serbian militias, while women and children were driven from their homes and crammed into a makeshift camp, Ježevac, on the outskirts of Tuzla to the north. Nearly thirty years have passed since the massacre, yet neither time nor the recognition and condemnation by international bodies have altered the fate of the survivors, who remain marginalized in Bosnian society to this day.
In Ceasefire (Prekid vatre), Jakob Krese’s camera immerses us in the precarious daily life of Hazira, one of the survivors. The short documentary premiered at the 75th Berlinale.
Filmed over several years in cinéma vérité style, Krese follows Hazira and her family in the small shack she occupies within the camp and its surroundings. Now in her fifties, Hazira struggles each day to persevere. She weeds, using nothing but her hands, the small plot of land behind her shack. She ventures into the forest to gather firewood—a meager haul that she struggles to carry back through the camp’s rugged and inhospitable terrain. She scrubs the interior of her shelter as best she can, trying to slow the decay of a dwelling that was never meant to be permanent. On screen, the passing seasons blur into one another, reinforcing through editing the stagnation that has gripped these refugees for years. The trauma, deeply embedded, is passed down to younger generations.
Though Krese has clearly fostered a certain intimacy with Hazira, he maintains a respectful distance, framing her with restraint and dignity. The numerous close-up shots, both indoors and outdoors, underscore the lingering sense of enclosure—between the survivors of Srebrenica and their descendants, still confined to the camp and its immediate surroundings, and the rest of Bosnian society. Even the planned relocation to a social housing complex does not appear, at first glance, to ease their reintegration. The residents’ anxious conversations, captured by Krese’s camera, suggest as much. This impression is reinforced by one of the film’s final overhead shots, which reveals the new housing complex: despite being situated in a lush residential neighborhood, it remains distinctly set apart—its shape and the hedge encircling it marking a visible boundary.
The film inevitably calls to mind My Father’s Diaries, which wove an intimate and perceptive narrative about the director’s father and their relationship, with the specter of the Srebrenica massacre looming in the background.
Film Fest Report is an accredited media at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
