TEHRAN -- Aida Begic, Bosnian director of the debut feature “Snow” that opened at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Friday, said that she is proud that Iran is one of the sponsors of the movie and that she is hoping to see it onscreen in Iran’s cinema halls soon.

Iran’s Experimental and Documentary Film Center (EDFC) is among the sponsors of the movie. “Snow” is a joint production of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, France, and Iran.
The film is about a group of Bosnian Muslim villagers, most of them women, returning to their remote village after war.
In an interview with EDFC Public Relations Office, Aida Begic, the young Bosnian Muslim female director, talked about the primary idea of the movie with Elma Tataragi. She remarked, “The major idea came to my mind when filmmaker Faruk Sabanovic and I were talking about our dreams for our country and both of us were wondering whether there were any dreams at all? We believe in the country of Bosnia and that its people are very special. They have experienced horrible events during the war but nonetheless remained human.”
She explained, “Elma is a good narrator and she assisted greatly in rewriting the screenplay. The movie presents the story of people who lost their families during the war. They actually lost their homes, farms and everything they possessed.
“Unfortunately, there remain many people who are living under dire conditions. We must live with this painful fact that the war criminals continue to live free and there is no one to speak about the war and for its victims any more,” she went on to say.
She also stated that she believes people must talk about the past and its hardships at length so that they might have a better and healthier future.
Begic also touched on the problems they faced in producing the movie and said, “Bosnia is a small country and ‘Snow’ was its only production in 2008. Many practitioners of cinematic arts have vanished from the country, making it almost impossible to produce a movie with a Bosnian crew. The necessary equipment and personnel are no longer found in the country, making it necessary to obtain the support of other organizations to produce a movie. Therefore, joint productions have become necessary for the survival of cinema in Bosnia.”
She concluded by saying that she is now working on a new project in which she will depict the problems of Bosnian women.
“Snow” is set in the small isolated village of Slavno four years after the war in Bosnia. A government delegation comes to Slavno, offering the villagers money to leave the village. But, the villagers, mostly women, find it hard to abandon their home and decide to fight for their freedom and the survival of Slavno.
The film was awarded the International Critics Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Festival in May.