My Father's Diaries

I diari di mio padre

Ado Hasanović
Italy, France | 2024 | 93 min
World premiere
Languages : English, Bosnian
Subtitles : English, French

A deep family taboo is shattered when Ado Hasanovic discovers the pages of his father’s diary and the images recorded by the latter in the midst of the Bosnian war. By retracing his father’s steps in the lead-up to the Srebrenica massacre, this monument to memory reveals, through the prism of one family, the wounds and undimmed pride of an entire people.

In 1993, Bekir Hasanović purchased a handheld camcorder for a single gold coin. Almost thirty years later, his son, the director, plays the tapes and discovers a deeply entrenched account of life in Srebrenica as the war raged on, recorded by his father and a motley crew of friends. Interwoven with texts narrated from Bekir’s own diaries, My Father’s Diaries paints a double portrait: that of his own family in times of peace, yet mired in a silence typical of long-endured trauma, alongside the worn-out images of a community whose optimistic humour and pride belie both the suffering they endured then, and the horrors which they were yet to endure. More than a gesture of remembrance, this film is the indelible trace of a young man’s desire to finally lift the taboo on a long-buried part of his father’s life, to reshape his image of him and finally understand exactly how he managed to survive the heinous genocide of Srebrenica... So that a new page may be written.
James Berclaz-Lewis

My Father's Diaries, 2024
Nomofobia, 2018
Pink Elephant, 2017
Rock My Trumpet, 2017
Mama, 2013
The Blue Viking in Sarajevo, 2012
The Angel of Srebrenica, 2010