Jasmila Zbanic

For Those Who Can Tell No Tales' is a story of memory and the energy of places that remain full of drama, pain, and denial.

In my country, though it is very patriarchal and male-dominated, the public enjoys women-directed movies.

As a child, I used to 'torture' other kids by making them be in my shows. I would sell tickets to neighbors and organize performances.

I want to create films that will speak to different parts of our hearts and brains, stories told from a different angle.

I am successful if I manage to make a film that I want and if it works emotionally for the audience and if it stays with them after the screening and means something for them. Awards or money have symbolic power.

As a woman filmmaker in Bosnia, I have more privileges than disadvantages. I feel I can do more than my male colleagues with a motherly approach rather than a male approach.

My generation has to deal with how to overcome a trauma, how to overcome destruction, and how to tell the truth to the next generation.

In the case of Bosnia, studies showed that turning to religion was a consequence of post-war depression and dissatisfaction.

Grbavica' is first of all a story about love, about love that is not pure because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair.

If you love your film, you have to fight for it.

I want to show that drama doesn't lie only in blood and destroyed buildings but in daily life, in ordinary human beings.

When I go to a cinema, I don't care if the film is made by a man or a woman as long as it tells me a story, as long as it offers pictures that shed light on my existence, characters I can identify with, jokes I can laugh at.