SCREENING: MLADEN MILJANOVIC: THE FINAL BATTLE

The Final Battle by artist Mladen Miljanović is a feature-length film centred on four teams conducting a casting audition. What unites these four groups is the fact that they are all direct or indirect participants in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Among them are veterans, war-disabled persons, and civilian victims of war, while the project for which they are casting actors is a fictional action war film. Drawing on the lived experiences of war victims and their family members, the film develops an anti-heroic narrative that views war as a loss rather than a victory. The imaginary casting process thus becomes a social experiment in which an apparently ordinary film audition is transformed into an unexpected lesson about war and its unfathomable horrors.

Experimental in its methodology and subversive in the way it incorporates part of its cast, Final Battle explores numerous personal stories connected to the war while raising questions about cultural violence and the cinematic representation of war in contemporary Western culture. In this context, the Bosnian perspective and the conflicts of the 1990s form the backbone of the narrative, while the direct experience of trauma evolves into a stark call for clarity and objectivity.

The film presents war victims and their families through their individual stories. The scale of their suffering, the extent of social devastation, and the depth of trauma permeate the social fabric and leave no one untouched. Documentary testimonies delivered in the first person, interwoven with the stylised fiction of a potential feature film, reinforce the sense of the harsh everyday reality faced by post-war societies and by those currently affected by war. National enthusiasm and patriotic euphoria are thereby stripped down to their foundations, while questions concerning the motives for war and the willingness to sacrifice one’s life or part of one’s body confront viewers with a profound sense of paradox and unease.

Following the screening, a discussion will be held with the author, Mladen Miljanović, and film participants Zlatan Kovačević and Sabahudin Hodžić. The evening will also feature a concert by Damir Avdić Graha, whose music appears in the film.