Trieste Film Festival 2025: My Father’s Diaries (dir. Ado Hasanović) | Review
My Father’s Diaries, which premiered at Visions du Réel, was presented as a special screening for schools at this year’s Trieste Film Festival. Director Ado Hasanović weaved an intimate and insightful story about his father and their relationship with the shadow of Srebrenica massacre in the background.
I can’t be sure what drove me to a 10:30 screening intended mainly for high-school children at the 36th Trieste Film Festival (16-24 January 2025), but I know I rushed my morning coffee to make sure I was on time for the documentary My Father’s Diaries (which premiered back at Visions du Réel 2024) shown out of competition.
Perhaps it was the common points between the director and myself that made it particularly interesting to see what he had to say. Ado Hasanović was my age when he experienced the collapse of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed. His childhood memories, just like mine, are sketchy and his father is in no mood to enlighten and expand on them. Also, where his father’s hobby was filming, my father’s was photography.
Although I was much luckier in rather peaceful Zagreb, Hasanović originates from Srebrenica – a town whose name became a byword for Yugoslav war crimes and genocide. How, I wondered, does the last generation that remembers the war think back on it? Turns out it’s with empathy and nostalgia.
Hasanović builds his feature My Father’s Diaries in three layers. The first is archival footage filmed by his father Bekir and his two friends during the siege of Srebrenica. The trio called themselves Ben, John & Boys and recorded candid interviews and short videos of passersby and those who shared their quarters. They also recruited amateurs to take on roles in staged scenes of war hospitals and the like.
The second layer of the film happens in present day. Grown up Hasanović uses the camera to peer into life from his father’s perspective. He’s interested in the Death March and his father’s memories of escape, but also in more than that. There are many glimpses of Ado, the boy, attempting to understand Bekir the man. Both his attempts are futile and often humorous as he tries to scratch under the surface of traditional masculinity.
The third layer is narration of his father’s diary entries in which the line between father and son is blurred. Ado reads his father’s memories over scenes driving the story forward and thus becomes him in a way. All three layers combine to make a compact, intimate story of a family like any other. There’s bickering that shows affection, teasing that stretches out a supporting hand.
There are few uncomfortable scenes in My Father’s Diaries. Hasanović intelligently and respectfully avoids focusing on the gory details of the massacre that looms over Srebrenica and the region to this day. Doing so he achieves something more relevant and lasting. My Father’s Diaries is a portrait of individuals – complete and complex personalities who had a brush with death and were spared; and the burden that comes with it.
It is a film about moving forward slowly and diligently without disregarding the past. And finally, it is a film about a boy who is attempting to shatter the code of silence that inhibits the generations before him. It is a kind film, a compassionate film, a love letter, really, to home, family and fathers; however imperfect or impenetrable they may be.
The Film Fest Report team was an accredited media at the 2025 Trieste Film Festival.
